Squirrel Saga Part 1 (Noises in the Attic)

So it started with some noises in the attic. My wife heard some scampering and assumed it was mice in the attic. I didn't feel like dealing with mice, so I was hoping that it was something on the roof or side of the house (I'm sure I have denial issues). I had heard some noises the week before in the other room, but it had sounded like it was outside and not in the attic, so I was hoping it was all the same source and maybe we had birds trying to get in a vent or something. Regardless, it didn't help that the day before I had done this





This is what happens when you stand on your ceiling. But it's okay, because...we had tape.



We had just painted and I was up cleaning the fan so we can paint it, and the board I was standing on slipped and knocked out some dry wall. And while we got that drywall at least back in place, we still had a whole where the light fixture goes. And after the scampering, of course we feared that a hole would be an invitation to any attic dwelling rodents to come into the house. And keeping rodents out of the house...is priority ONE! Looking back...I'm not really sure why we didn't try to just put the light fixture back up, except that the drywall breakage was around the whole, and it was already off centered from the mount and I think it used the board that slipped to hold it in. Regardless...I felt like a plastic bag and tape would be better.



And for good measure, we put a trash can underneath so if something did fall through...it would either be caught (man I was dreaming) or more likely...we would at least know.



So still not sure what the plan on attack was to be (mouse traps, exterminator, etc), we went with the sophisticated trash can defense for a couple of days. One day soon after I heard some noises again and went outside to find a squirrel hanging upside down from our attic over hang chewing on a grate.



If you were to zoom in, you could see a few dark spots where the squirrel had been chewing.

The noise of going from roof to upside down sounded to me a lot like what I heard weeks before. The sound of the feet against siding. So I was actually a little relieved, because I assumed it was what Ann had heard, and therefore the noise was exterior to the house, and the attic might still be void of rodents. But I could also see that the squirrel was trying to penetrate our house, and therefore could not be left to continue without intervention. But since I thought he'd been at it for a couple of weeks, and he barely seemed to be making progress...I wasn't stressing about it.

But the next day I went out and discovered that he/she was not moving at the snail's pace I had thought. It was now obvious that at this rate, the squirrel would gain entrance very soon! So I started brain storming. What kind of MacGyver set up could I install that would stop the squirrel from chewing on the grate? My ideas went from how to put a bad flavor on the grates, to what to put over it to prevent the chewing. The next morning I had the BRILLIANT idea of installing a mouse trap (a big one) upside down in that very spot. Then when the squirrel went to go chew on it, it would snap, and I imagined that it wouldn't catch the squirrel, but just knock it off the roof. If it nothing else, even after having been tripped, it would at least cover the area. It's probably a good thing that I never got to try this out because...it was a stupid stupid idea. But the morning I had made the decision to do that...I went out and found this.



Before you freak out...it is alive. But it was definitely stuck.