Readers respond: Squirrel tales (from the Star Tribune)
Reverend Mother told me that the Strib was soliciting squirrel stories when I saw her at the MOB event; but, it was already over when I went to check it out. I read some of these. If I had sent in a story, it would have been this:
When I was at Gustavus, a few of us were renting out the basement apartment of a local residence, and it had a fireplace. There were about 5 of us, all rugby players, sitting around after a game and imbibing heavily (in celebration of a victory I'm sure, but it would have been the same situation had we lost) when a squirrel came popping out of the fireplace and landed on the floor right in the middle of us.
There was just a brief moment of eye contact with all of us, and then---envision a scene and the music from the Benny Hill Show---all heck broke loose.
The little rodent had us going for about 15 minutes chasing him over every square inch of the place. At one point he was in the bathroom on the shower rod, he took a leap, landed on top of my head, and then continued on his merry way. We eventually did corner him and got him in a towel. We just took him outside and let him go.
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4 comments:
I did a tour as the token Air Force guy on a small Navy base in Virginia a few years back. Base housing was nice, though small, with lots of beautiful hardwood trees complete with resident squirrel population. We didn't have any problems until one day when the car wouldn't start. Turns out that the nasty critters climbed up into the engine and chewed the starter wires.
About $80 later we were okay, but it happened again, and again. The filthy Navy rodents hit us four times in six weeks. The base wouldn't let us poison or shoot them for some reason. I finally went to a local sporting goods store and got a bottle of fox urine. A splash under the wheel wells did the trick and we never had another problem with them.
A word of warning, though. Fox urine is only slightly less persistent than skunk, so don't get it on your hands.
Well, that trauma certainly explains a lot about your current attitude.
We had a squirrel breach our perimeter once. I'm not sure how it got in, but I have a better idea of how it ended. I was coming downstairs in the morning and looked into the entry hall at the foot of the stairs. It appeared one of the girls had left a stuffed animal laying out. Instead, when I got down there, I discovered a squirrel with its throat neatly ripped out. Neither of our cats confessed, so I ended up giving both of them extra dessert that night.
That reminds me of Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase.
Oops, I forgot. Squirrel tale. My only one shows the value of cats. My cats would kill squirrels when I had a house and you'd find squirrel carcasses in the back yard under the bushes. They kept those buggers in check.
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