Squirrelly

I like all animals. They each have their niche in a grand global scheme. That being said, I also think hunting is OK (although dreadfully boring to me).

BUT - wild animals do not belong in your home. Do not, do not, do not! This realization came upon us this past weekend. I know, this should be an innate kind of knowledge, but until you've experienced it, you aren't really aware.

We live in a subdivision happily nestled in the woods. The builder took great care to save as many trees as possible when constructing the houses. Our back yard is the forest. I am very generous with the birds, giving them all sorts of different seeds and treats and suet. Of course, along with birds you get squirrels and chipmunks. I'm not adverse to feeding them as well as the birds as long as they don't hog everything. And, they really don't. On the plus side, they are a delight for Copper, our Cavalier, to chase and worry at.

Now for the minus side. We have a many gabled roof on our house. This means that there are lots of "access points" that a small creature, if looking for warmth can enter. It got cold this weekend - quite cold for Atlanta in late March. So, one of the cuddly, well fed squirrels sought out some warmth in our attic. Once inside, he promptly fell down inside one of our walls. Of course, this wall is part of our master bedroom.

We thought that the squirrel was just being noisy scratching around as he did. Eventually we thought he might have gone outside since it warmed up during the day, and the scratching quieted down. So we went about our business. We got up, and went into our office to check email. We had lost our internet connection. So, we went through the usual routine of booting and rebooting all the apparatus - nothing. The next step is always to wait an hour because calling the ISP is like entering an early vision of limbo, waiting and prompting and waiting and prompting. After the requisite hour, we tried the booting again - still nothing. At the same time as we were booting, we began hearing the scratching again. Now I was getting a little stressed. I went into the bedroom that has another computer and, like magic, it was able to connect to the internet! Although nice, this stressed me out some more as I was beginning to deduce that we had a problem that had nothing to do with our ISP.

So, into the attic I went. Didn't see the squirrel. Went back down into the office and banged on the wall. "Squeak, squeak!" came the response. Went back into the attic, armed with a flashlight and began searching in earnest. Lo and behold, there the rascal was, 10 feet down from the floor of the attic, trapped in a wall cavity, with the cable attached to our computer dangling in the air, torn in two. The turkey buzzard had chewed through it in his unsuccessful attempts at escape.

What to do? Didn't want the little bugger to die in the wall, Lord only knows how that would smell. First attempt, put a 1x2 in the wall cavity in hopes that the not so bright passenger would climb out. Nada. Second attempt, a brilliant one I might add: Dangle a dock line down into the cavity so the natural climber could shimmy on up and out. After getting the rope in there, we left and went shopping - always the best thing to do in a stressful emergency. Three hours later we returned and, voila! Gone! See ya! Tootles!

No more squirrel in the house. I'm pretty sure he won't be back. But just in case were going to do something about those access points. I really don't relish the aspect of staying awake all night to "scratch scratch scratch" and "squeak squeak".

Moral of the story? If you want to get wireless internet access going in your house, rent a squirrel.