Month 9: The Squirrel Wars

If it’s not one thing, it’s its mother. The first thing was the smell. A few months ago, a foul stench infiltrated our family room. Since the city was working on the pipes on our street, we assumed they’d hit a sewage line or something. Ewwww …

But after having a Water Guy and a Plumber Guy and finally a Pest Control Guy come check it out, several things were determined:

1) There was, in fact, a strong odor coming from one corner of the room (like we needed this confirmed?!)
2) The stench may or may not have something to do with some vent
3) The stench may or may not come from something that died in the wall or under the floor
4) The aforementioned rotting dead thing could not be located and therefore could not be removed
5) We had no choice but to live with the odor until/if it went away (which it s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y has)

So the thing that died in there? Its mother came looking for him last week.

I was feeding Miles his lunch when I heard it: thump, thump, THUMP! Scritchy, scratch. (Humor me, OK? It’s hard to describe in words.) It was coming from the basement. It was on the stairs. It sounded like an intruder. A big, heavy intruder who had silently and stealthily opened the side door (which is locked), stepped over the piles of recycling (which block access to the door), and was running amok in the basement, possibly armed with garden tools.

I immediately called C. and made him come home. Brandishing a snow shovel, he inspected every inch of the basement. Nada. I could see him stifling a smirk and planning what he’d tell the guys at the office about his wimpy, delusional wife. Whatever. I know what I heard.

I continued to hear it over the next two days. So did my mom, who was visiting. (So THERE, C.!) Still, we could not isolate where the sound was coming from, or what was making it. The scratching and gnawing seemed to indicate it was probably not human, however.

So I was carrying a load of laundry down the stairs when I noticed the dog food had been pilfered – something had chewed all the way through the heavy-duty Rubbermaid container! Crap, we had a varmint on our hands. Probably a rabid one, at that. Add that to the list of things I never worried about before I was home with a baby: rabid rodents attacking my family. Then, a flash of brown fur caught my eye. The squirrel vanished into a hole in the ceiling of its own making. Screams, curses, and scattered laundry ensued.

C. brought home a squirrel trap. This only angered the little fella, and caused him to run around in circles, screeching indignantly. C. managed to corral him into a shoebox and freed him into the wild. (The Wild Blue Cul-de-Sac, that is.) Where the squirrel will, no doubt, gather all his friends and gnaw his way back into our house.

Where was our fearless guard dog during all this, you might ask? Cowering in her bed, quaking with fear. Literally. Quaking. Same as she was when the mice – never seen or heard from before or since – appeared in the kitchen THE ONE NIGHT I had FOUR TRAYS of PAINSTAKINGLY HANDMADE cookies sitting out for my sister-in-law’s baby shower the next day. (Don’t worry, A., they only got two trays.) If the next critter’s a raccoon, we’re moving.

TIP O’ THE WEEK: No tip, just a bittersweet observation. In just a few days, Miles will have been outside of me for as long as he was inside of me. Strange, sad, and totally expected, all at the same time. And now he’s scrabbling away from me as fast as his chubby little hands and knees can take him. :(