Wishing Upon a Star
July 10 -- Squirrel Central........
I shouldn't be up this early...
On a day I could sleep in, I was up at 6:30.
And why?
Because I discovered that a #@*&^%**$ squirrel is eating the plants on my bedroom balcony!
Have I mentioned that I HATE squirrels?
I was ready to get a gun (I don’t own one) and blow the sucker away.
This explains why I’ve thought the plants have been looking as if the roots are coming out of the soil. I think this may be the same squirrel that tormented me during the winter.
How can squirrels torment you ask? Well, let me tell you!
Back in January they decided to take up residence in my ceiling. Some of the flashing from the roof had come loose during a windstorm, and these industrious rodents figured my place looked cozy. They would make the most irritating scratching sound as they burrowed their way in.
I lived in fear that I was going to look up one day and a furry head would be poking into my bedroom. For a while pounding on the wall worked to shut them up, then turning on the air conditioner worked (remember this is BOSTON IN JANUARY), then nothing worked. They'd developed super-rodent powers! Ugh. All I heard was scratching...scratching....it was vaguely reminiscent of Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart".
>One afternoon there was quite a ruckus in the ceiling. Apparently the squirrels were having a domestic dispute. It was the weirdest sound...lots of squeaking and scratching. So I put an end to it by vacuuming the ceiling. This noise seemed to work.
Or so I thought. All it really did was move them even further into the apartment. One day I came home from work to find squirrels scratching in the living room ceiling. The cat was acting strange and kept yelling at me and poking me until I followed him into the bedroom. What did I discover?? THEY HAD EATEN A HOLE THROUGH THE CEILING!!!!
I called the property manager who was a jerk and more or less said, "Look I don't plan to do anything about it till it stops raining"
To which I responded. "And what do you want me to do about the holes they've dug in the ceiling?"
Silence.
He was there within the hour.
He decided they’d set some humane traps in the ceiling and would repair the eaves as well.
I filled the hole they had dug with plastic bags and duct taped over the hole. If the roof was repaired I felt that at least I knew that they had no portals through which they could enter! I was actually feeling optimistic that they’d be gone! My biggest fear was that they were wily little creatures and were sort of lulling me into a false sense of security before they POUNCED!
A week later my landlord came to help assess the damage and when he removed the tape I'd put over the quarter-sized hole, a huge chunk of plaster, etc., came down. The hole was now about the size of two fists! He realized he needed a camera to take pictures for insurance purposes, so he took a walk around the corner to the grocery store to buy a disposable. While he was gone I thought I'd try to vacuum up some of the mess. When I finished I heard a scuffling over my head, and the damn thing was trying to get through the hole. Brave person that I am I FREAKED!!!! I grabbed a cardboard box, jumped on a stool, and held it over the hole.
Fortunately the landlord came back fairly quickly and we figured out a way to block the hole using a combination of cardboard, plastic grocery bags, steel wool and duct tape. So now this was going to require major construction repairs and all sorts of people traipsing through my apartment.
It took almost two months for them to trap both squirrels. One was captured fairly quickly, the other was more elusive. So now they’ve returned to the scene of the crime to eke out their revenge on my poor plants. I think I’m going to go and dump some pepper on them (the plants). I've been told that squirrels hate pepper. It's worth a try. Let them burn their little hands and tongues!!
The hole has yet to be repaired, which is typical of most apartment life! I may write an epic poem about this...something along the lines of Beowulf or Gilgamesh. Or Dr. Seuss.
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