The Revenge of the Squirrel

 

  I've been carrying on a low grade war with squirrels for over forty years. As long as they stay in the woods we get along fine. But let them start hanging around the porch or going inside the garage, then they're dead. I don't shoot them. I set a live trap and transport them five miles to the Wildlife Management Area. I let all of them go in the same area and my expectation is that a family member will welcome the newcomer to his new home.

  The problem with squirrels is they chew things. They've evolved to chew and I've evolved to resent it. They also get into places they don't belong. Once, after a party in the screened porch, a squirrel chewed through the screening to get at the leftovers. I opened the door to the outside, but the squirrel panicked. There were balloons tacked up in the corners of the porch and the squirrel kept jumping on them and blowing them up.

  This squirrel chase would have been funny but I had to go to work. I got out my .22 and fired a warning shot into a corner post.  The squirrel immediately left through the hole he came in through. Just this spring, Teresa noticed a rustling in the stove pipe in the Shêdeau, our guest house. Sure enough, a squirrel had slipped down the stove pipe. The fire was out otherwise my story would have ended here.

  I always go for the easy solution first so I lowered a rope down the pipe. A squirrel could be trained to climb a rope, but this was not a good time.  I realized the pipe would have to come off. I pictured the sooty squirrel rocketing all over the Shêdeau and a guest house is not a good place to fire a warning shot.

  So I called my friend Steve. By the time Steve arrived the rustling in the pipe had quit. Maybe the squirrel had expired. I carefully opened the stove door. There in the back of the firebox was a very ashy squirrel. Hmmmm. We opened the door to the screen porch and also the screen door to the outside world. Steve set his phone video camera in the porch facing the stove door. He's good at keeping a pictorial record.

  We banged on the back of the stove and soon the squirrel shot out into the porch. I quickly shut the house door. The squirrel should have turned left to freedom, but turned right instead so Steve's phone recorded a squirrel running back and forth followed by our feet, and our hollering.

  Once the squirrel was gone, I put a piece of screening onto the chimney cap as a squirrel preventer. Spring turned into summer and summer into fall when squirrel karma returned to chew my butt. After a few days of wood fires, the Shêdeau filled with smoke. Creosote had built up on the screening and was blocking the draft. The screen would have to go. This would be an easy job when there's no snow on the roof. There's a not very steep portion of roof, that I use my eight foot ladder to get on, followed by a steep portion which I can ordinarily scramble up to get to a flat area where I can work on the chimney cap.

 The steep area cannot be scrambled up when it's snow covered. So I got a six foot ladder to climb up onto the flat area. I stuck a few scraps of wood under two of the ladder legs to level the ladder and Teresa steadied the ladder as I ascended. Remember those scraps of wood. I removed the plugged screen from the cap, tossed down the scraps of wood, and removed my ladders. I lit a fresh fire and it drew nicely.

  A few days later I was blowing snow off the path behind the Shêdeau when there was a loud crack and my engine stopped dead. I had neglected to pick up all those scraps of wood and now one of them was jammed in my auger. I got the engine started and took the blower to the garage.

  I tried using a pry bar first, but that would have been too easy. The auger shear pin should have done its one job and sheared off and I could have then pulled the wood out and installed a new shear pin. That also would have been too easy. 

  I asked myself what Steve would do. And then I grabbed my handy reciprocating saw and after some judicious carving and chiseling, my problem was solved. By this time the morning was shot, so I returned to the house to wait for the third shoe to drop.

  

Just like a squirrel