Squirrels 'R' Us

You may remember that we've had squirrels living in our attic for years. 

YEARS.

(Remember this?)

We tried to get rid of them, but they kept coming back. We sealed up the holes, we hung mothballs, we cut down the tree that they were using to scale the house, and most recently, we spent thousands of dollars to completely rebuild our chimney box, which they'd chewed hole upon hole into so they'd have lots of convenient entry points.

Honestly, over the years, we'd become accustomed to hearing them bustling around up there. It had become part of the normal background noise of our house. And yes, I've heard all the horror stories of squirrels chewing through ceilings and falling into kids' beds, squirrels peeing and pooping all over attics and stinking up entire houses, squirrels flying into people's faces when they'd open their attic doors ... but really. For the most part, ours seemed to just want to live and let live.

At some point we just accepted that.

But now that we're preparing to put the house on the market, we have to get serious. I mean, what if the next owners don't want to co-habitate with a nice family of squirrels? 

So I bit the bullet. I got on Angie's List about a month ago and purchased an $89 "rodent-exclusion package."

The first several days were UNBEARABLE. I was like, "What if the babies went in the trap and the mom and dad didn't, and the babies are stuck in there and the parents can't get them out? And now the parents' paws are all bloody because they've been pawing at the trap, trying to break their babies out of jail, and the guy goes back up there and he calls back down to us and says, 'Well, the good news is, I've got your squirrels. The bad news is, you've gotta replace a lot of bloody insulation up here.' "

I mean, I was having, like, NIGHTMARES about my precious little squirrel family. And the nightmares went on and on and on, because the Rodent-exclusion Specialist didn't ever show back up. 

I spent three weeks having mini-strokes worried about Squirrel Jail, and this guy couldn't be bothered to come back and check the trap he set on December 11. No worries, though, because last weekend I told Grayson that I'd changed my mind. I was CERTAIN that there were no squirrels in the trap.

I said, "I KNOW these squirrels. I can see it as plain as day. They walked into that trap on their hind legs, cleaned that peanut butter up with their opposable thumbs [OUR squirrels have opposable thumbs] and sauntered right back out without getting caught."

And then I asked him to go up and check the trap, BECAUSE I SURE AS HECK WASN'T GOING UP THERE TO DO IT MYSELF.

So he did. Spoiler Alert: No Squirrels Were In The Trap. After three weeks. Do you want to take a guess at what else was not in the trap?

The peanut butter.

So I called the Rodent-exclusion Expert and asked him if he was ever planning to come back. I also told him he hadn't trapped any squirrels. And that his peanut butter was gone.

He said he'd come back yesterday with another trap. Which he did. He also noted that the trap had been sprung -- but somehow the squirrels STILL made it out with the peanut butter. 

INTERNET. I'm telling you. WE'VE GOT THE ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS OF SQUIRRELS. I feel like if I could actually catch them, I could put them in a movie or something.

Anyway. He set a new trap, and we're gonna see if this one will catch them.

But ohhhhhh, I'm AGONIZING over it, Internet. I'm just torn up about it. I feel like such a traitor. I really feel like they've EARNED their place here. And they've felt pretty safe for 15 years, and who are we to suddenly take that away from them.

{You think I need counseling, don't you.}

The only thing keeping me going is that this is supposedly a catch-and-release program. You wanna hear about it? They catch them in these humane traps, and they've found that if they release them a mile or two away, they typically find their way back. So what they do is, they take them SIX OR SEVEN miles away and release them.

Well here's what I have to say about that: I've read about cats and dogs who get lost or stolen and find their way home from 1,200 miles away. 

Pretty sure our squirrels will be back in less than two weeks.