Holy Squirrels!!!

Well we had a little excitement this past weekend. On Saturday morning long after I had gotten up and headed off to work, Melissa was sitting in the living room having a morning cup of coffee, watching the news, and enjoying a leisurely start to a nice weekend. She had no idea what was about to start a new episode of drama in our house. Squirrels!!! Apparently there was a change of cast this year, instead of Santa coming down the chimney it was a pack of squirrels and they came a week early. Melissa heard some chattering and an occasional bark coming from the chimney and soon the dog, Sydney, also became aware. It did not take long to realize that it wasn't coming from outside but actually from within the chimney.

When I came home that night she had already informed me of our house guests or guest... at this point we thought there was only one! I opened the trap door to the flew hoping that he would eventually come down into the fireplace where they would be trapped behind the glass. The weekend went by and he did not emerge but continued to chatter from within. Each night after work, I went up on the roof to shine a light down the chimney on to my little menacing, uninvited guest. Sunday night my father in law and I made some failed attempts to extract the invador. Finally Monday came and I had a day off and with it an opportunity to solve this vermin infestation once and for all.

Dana, Melissa's uncle called and came to my rescue around 10am. He showed me that it was possible to remove the trap door. This proved to be the key. With the trap door removed I could finally see the little bastard's and it was then that I realized that there was not one, nor two, but three squirrels living in the chimney.

After several unsuccessful attempts to remove them including a home made net, poking and prodding with sticks, shovels, tennis rackets and trowels it became clear that there was only one way to remove them witch was to roll up our sleeves put on work gloves and reach up there and pull them out kick and screaming by hand!!

This was not an easy task. Being it my house and there for my responsibility to defend, as Dana pointed out on several occasions I was the lucky person who got to go after them. I reached up, grabbed the little bastard from the back of the neck pulled him down and stuffed him into a trash can we had positioned in the fireplace. We then put a lid on it and carried him out side and freed him. He instantly took off and up a tree. This sounds like it was smooth but it was quite a challenge. After helping me removing the first son-of-a-bitch-squirrel Dana had to leave. This left me to deal with two now very angry unhappy barking hissing growling squirrels. I took a break to allow them to calm down. An hour or so later I went in again after the second squirrel. This squirrel came out much as the first only luck was on my side and he did not put up much of a struggle and was relatively easy to remove.

After such success with the first two squirrels I went after the third, perhaps with little false confidence in myself. I pulled him loose from his perch and went to put him in the can. He fought like a son of a gun and I dropped him. Pulling my hands out of the fireplace I slammed the door shut. At this point I realized that he was a little faster than I had been. He was on my side of the fireplace door. He ran off into the living room and started scaling the drapes and attempting to head butt his way out the dining room window. I ran into the kitchen opened the back door and was able to finally shoo him out the back door after he knocked over a pile of cds and books. Just as he disappeared up a tree Melissa opened the front door. This was good timing. If she had come home a moment earlier with the squirrel still running though the house I'm not sure how she would have reacted.
Needless to say, we will soon be installing a chimney cap to eliminate the possibility of future invadements.