Saturday, September 13, 2014

Attack of the Killer Squirrels

My wife Lisa's family lives in a very rural area of New Hampshire. The nearest big town is Keene, most famous for the location of the Robin Williams movie Jumanji. Her brother, aunt and mother all live on family property about a mile from each other and the nearest neighbors are about that far as well. The aunt and brother in-law live in fairly new houses that they built, but my mother in-law, Nancy, lives in a couple hundred year old farm that is mostly wood with a stone foundation. It's a huge rambler house with rickety old wooden stairs and several fireplaces and a wood stove that heat the place. There are a million little cracks and holes in the walls; in some cases you can actually see through to the outside.

We were there visiting for Christmas. We stayed at Nancy's(she goes by Pook) and then going up the hill for Christmas. Like I said the house is large and rustic. My mother in-law had some health problems a few years earlier and she isn't the tidiest person in the world. So there are usually books everywhere, dishes in the sink and writing projects on the table. This year there was a huge cage like thing on the kitchen table. It was a Have A Heart animal trap. When I asked what it was for I was told squirrels. I laughed because I assumed it was really for rats or mice. But Pook assured me it was for squirrels.

We had a really nice Christmas Eve up at my brother in-laws house. A winter storm was dumping a lot of snow and when got home we all rushed into the house. I heard the clawing and clicking before I even went to the dining table and saw a huge squirrel trapped in the cage. I assumed we were going to take it out and let it go but Pook wanted to wait until the next day to drive to another town. She said that they had to be relased more than a mile away or they'd come back. I didn't know if that was true, but I'm from California where we don't often trap squirrels so I kept my mouth shut.

I went into the living room and tried to  read but I kept hearing the squirrel trying to break out of it's cage. I went to bed but even up there I could hear Steve(I nicknamed the squirrel Steve McQueen who played a POW in the Great Escape). I also was certain I heard scratching in our room, so I slept with the covers up to my chin for protection;like I said I grew up in the suburbs in California.

The next day the roads were impassable and we were more or less snowed in. We ate breakfast in the drawing room with the squirrel scratching away. I went upstairs to the guestroom to read. When I opened the door I saw a bag of coffee that someone had given us as a gift laying on the floor with a huge hole in it and coffee all over the floor. Before I had time to do any detective work I heard a noise and looked up and saw another squirrel careening around the wooden ceiling beams, leaping from beam to beam, jumping to the wall and then coming toward me. It was hopped up on Caffeine and heading for me. In terror I  slammed the door and ran to get Lisa; I'm not equipped for fighting off deadly squirrels.

Lisa went around the outside and slid up one of the windows that could be reached from the side of the hill. After an hour we went in and the squirrel. was gone, presumably through the window. We shut the window and made sure there was no more food in our room.

After eating both lunch and dinner with Steve scratching away at his cage, Pook finally decided it was time to let Steve go. She went to her secret squirrel disembarkation place and came back resetting the trap. 

The next morning I woke up and didn't hear any noise from the trap. But as I went to get coffee I noticed something laying in the trap. There on the bottom of the cage was a dead squirrel. According to my brother in-law this was very unusual. We decided that this was the squirrel from the bedroom and the cause of death was caffeine overdose. 

I'm told that someone has finally squirrel proofed that house. Maybe I won't have to stay in a hotel the next time I visit.




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