Squirrel Saga Part 3 (An Encounter of Epic Proportions)

So after this and this, we hear more noises in the attic. The same scampering sound. This was a little disheartening, and wasn't really near the corner where the excluder was, so it didn't seem like it was on its way out. I go outside to make sure it wasn't something exterior trying to get back in. There was nothing outside and I could tell the sounds were coming from out exterior attic vent. So I go into the attic and finally make visual contact. It was sitting between the vent in fan at the far end of the attic. So I could just called the company that came out before and let them know I see more. But I thought, "What are they going to do? They aren't going to put traps up there. They are going to just hope it goes out of the hole and get locked out." Plus it was Labor day, so it would be at least a day before they came out. But I could see it! I had to make my own attempts at removing it.

Let me tell you I was not lacking in creativity. Just intelligence. My first idea was to try to turn the fan on, hoping it would somehow open the vents (like the interior attic fan does). With the vents open and a fan spinning on the other side, I was hoping it would gladly make its exit. This assumes that the vents actually opened, and the fan didn't freak it out and for some reason walk into it. That would have produced entirely different problem. Thankfully...the fan didn't work. I turned the interior attic fan on, thinking they may be connected. They weren't. There was a switch just hanging out in the attic, but somewhat near the fan which I thought might turn it on. It didn't. And later, when looking at the vent from the outside, I'm pretty sure it wasn't going to open up. So I was back to brain storming.

My next strategy was capture. So I thought..."what do I need to capture it?" Bait. I figured peanut butter would do. A cage. I had some plastic bins that should suffice. And a closing mechanism. I decided to go with the classic pull on a string and collapse the cage strategy. Very sophisticated. So I leave the attic to fashion my device. I put peanut butter in a baggy and tie an extension cord around a ruler type tool that was going to hold the lid open. Then I did a few practice tugs and considered the results satisfactory. I was going with the "luring the squirrel into the bin and closing the lid" plan instead of the "turning the bin upside down and trying to let it fall around the squirrel" plan. The former provided more of a guarantee that the squirrel would be in the bin. Trying to get it to fall fast enough might scare it in ways that might cause damage to the attic or myself.

Phase two was to solve the problem of how to spring the trap. The "easiest" option was for me to sit there and watch it and to pull the chord when it was time. But was the squirrel going to go in when I was around? I couldn't think of any other way to have an automated springing, so...manual springing was my only option. Did I think this would work? Absolutely not. But it was a holiday, its presence up there was stressing us out. I'm a patient guy...I could wait the squirrel out. What did I have to lose? (For future reference, the answer is my wife)

So I go back up into the attic with my peanut butter and make-shift cage and I set it about 8 feet away from the entrance. We don't have a large attic, and all of the surfaces are slanted as they were installed on the diagonal beams. And there were no boards much farther away from the entrance. So I pushed it out to it's farthest point, set up the string pulley device and retreated to the attic entrance. Now our attic is the kind where the entrance is a whole in the ceiling that you access by pulling on a string and a set of stairs come down. So I perched myself on the stairs so that basically just my chest sticking out. I want to make sure the squirrel smells the peanut butter, so I turn the attic fan on again for a couple of seconds, which I hoped would pull air from the house into the attic, and out of the vent it was sitting by. This would have to drag some of the delicious smelling peanut butter towards the squirrel. Then I turn off all the lights and I wait. There was still light coming from the attic entrance I was standing in, but I was hoping the attic would seem dark and quiet enough for the squirrel. I was hoping that maybe it was super hungry since it had been up there alone for a couple of days. The optimal scenario would be one where there squirrel caught a whiff of the peanut butter, sending it into a crazed, hunger stupor where it immediately bolted for the bin, jumping inside and proving my strategy and implementation to be both flawless and genius! What can I say. I'm a dreamer.

It didn't take long before the squirrel started moving after turning the lights out, but it was not moving out of the fan/vent area. The bin was now partially obstructing my view of the fan, so I would hear a bunch of noise, but I kept having to look around and above the bin to see. So I wasn't standing very still. And every couple of minutes I would turn the light back on to get a visual. In the same way that continuously checking your grill lets out all the heat and you are better off just letting your food cook...checking on the squirrel wasn't helping my cause. But I couldn't see the bin very well and didn't know if I would know when it contained the target. I was hoping that it would be entered by the opposite side. The side I couldn't see. But then I would only be able to catch a shadow, and it was tough to tell if that would be enough. So I turn a flashlight on and point it at the bin. This had the added benefit of helping me not worry that the noises coming from the darkness was the squirrel coming to feast on my unsuspecting face.

So lights are out, flashlight's on, cord is in hand. All I have to do is wait. It is strange when you hear noises from something you can't see just what your mind thinks is going on. I heard it leave the vent, and then I heard scuffling. Honestly...I thought it had somehow gone outside and was walking on the roof. Maybe it was just hopeful thinking. Then I could tell that it was a little closer and was not outside, but near the bin. My heart starts thumping. Not necessarily out of nervousness for my exposed position...but out of the anticipation that I might be a freakin' genius! Still...scurring from a dark corner of the attack is a bit unnerving. I had made visual contact, but had not necessarily successfully ascertained the size of the animal I was dealing with. Suddenly, I saw movement in a shadow by the bin. Around this time, Ann was coming out of our room to A) See what the hell I was up to (I had not informed her of my plans) and B) Whatever it was...to tell me to quit being stupid and stop. I motioned for her to got back into the bedroom as there was no turning back now. The squirrel was on the move. Actually...there was turning back. All I had to do was scare it and retreat down the attic. It would have been so simple.

The squirrel advances slowly out of the shadows. Again...a little unnerving. I was hoping it wouldn't come around to this side of the trap. But I figured it was just checking it out to see if there was another way into the bin. It advanced slowly and cautiously (yet with quick, jerky movements...each of which...again...was unnerving). Several times I was about to reach out and move the flashlight to scare it and get it to quit advancing, as I really wanted it advancing on the trap...not my face. But each time, I thought...it's going to turn around any second. It's just checking it out. But it was now close enough that if it was an inanimate object that I had left in the attic...I would simply have had to lean forward and grab it from my current position. I was also wondering...can't it see me? I'm not perfectly still. I mean...I wasn't making sudden movements, but I'm sure I wasn't as still as I could be. And in fact...it did seem to know something was there. Something was making it hesitate.

Suddenly it gave out this horrific cry! And by horrific I mean it was like the growl from Lion King when baby Samba is trying to scare the butter fly. But softer and higher pitched. My first thoughts were that it was scared and that the cry should be interpreted to the affect of "Mommy Mommy! What do I do?!? I'm Hungry!!!" But I now believe that his exact words were



Do you know those moments in life when you realize that you are in the middle of a huge mistake? Like when you start making a left turn and realize the oncoming car is coming faster than you thought. Or when you ski off what looks like a small ramp, you're in mid air, and you know you aren't going to stick the landing. Or the moment when you are camping and you realize that what you are sitting on isn't a rock but a hungry, man-eating alligator. Oh how I would substitute any of those moments for the one I experienced next.

After it's declaration of freedom, it leapt from it's current position to the opposite end of the attic opening (the stairs come up to one end, so I was not centered on the opening). From there it leapt directly onto my shirt and then dropped into the house. I believe my exact words were...."$%@#!!! I made a mistake!!!" You remember priority ONE?!? Nothing could have been worse unless the squirrel had made a pit stop on my face before exiting the attic (which is what Ann was in our room visualizing the entire time). Had the squirrel leapt on my face, had a snack, and retreated back into the attic...that probably would have been preferred.

So it falls to the floor and starts running away. The only saving grace occurred when it decided to dart into one of our spare rooms. And the room was one with no bed and only a couple of empty dressers and bookshelves (and a chair that Ann wants to dispose of anyway). It's a small room with few places to hide. Had it been in the guest room with a bed...the bed and linens would have later been burned...assuming I ever caught it. The bed is a terrible place to try to catch a squirrel. And this bed is in the middle of the room, meaning it has three open sides, but also means that no side is far away from any wall or furniture. Meaning to walk around or look under the bed...you have to stick your face pretty close to the bed (can you tell I have a phobia of squirrels attacking my face?). I don't know what a trapped squirrel would do. It might attack your ankles when you walked around the bed. Who knows. Thankfully! I still don't know. Because it went in the other, smaller room. I of course am not far behind it and I close it in the room. I had time to think about my options, but there was little to think about. We just had new carpet put in. The squirrel needed to come out! I was going to have to go in there after it. I go back in the attic and grab my cage and then I grab a sweatshirt (in case I needed to grab it), and I enter the arena.

There is the squirrel in the far corner of the room. Scared to death of course (and it wasn't the only one). By now having gotten a good look at the squirrel, I was able to ascertain that it was in fact an infant and was much less scary (if not pretty gosh darn cute). Had it been an adult squirrel (assuming I wouldn't have bolted from the attic as soon as I saw it), there is no way I would have gone in there. Professionals would have been called out. They are faster, and seem much more aggressive if cornered. So I face off with the baby squirrel, and the chase commences. It darts behind dressers and runs from one corner to the next while I follow behind with a plastic bin. I'm not sure what my plan was. I guess I hoped that I would corner it and out of crazed terror it would jump into the bin which I would then turn right side up and cover before Satan's spawn leapt out onto...of course...my face. A few turns around the room proved fruitless for both competitors. The squirrel was going no where, and I wasn't catching anything. It all happened so fast (yet time seemed to stand still), I'm not really sure what all I tried. I tried covering it with the sweatshirt hoping it would just sit still after that and I could cover it with the cage (I'm an eternal optimist). A lot of time was spent trying to herd it into the open corners. It seemed like a long time, but Ann informs me that the whole thing didn't last more than 5 or 10 minutes. Anyway, at some point I abandon the bin and am holding both sweatshirt and lid. The bin is sitting upright a few feet away. The lid was used for herding the squirrel places. The sweatshirt for protection against sudden air attacks. Somewhere in there I found that if I slanted the lid and slid it along the ground towards the squirrel it would jump on it. How might this be a good thing you may ask? Well...when it jumps on the lid, I then had the opportunity to fling it through the air (something I learned through necessity of getting the squirrel off the lid the first time). How does flinging it through air solve all my problems? Well...if you can direct it towards where you want to go, you can achieve certain goals. So it took a few tries...but on the third or fourth toss...SWISH!...straight in the bin! I quickly secure the lid (though I'm pretty sure the bin was too big for the infant squirrel, and that my original plan would have never come to fruition, even if the squirrel did desire food over freedom) and start voicing sounds of victory. If I was Rocky...I had just run up those steps and decided to start dancing around. This celebration was short lived because I quickly went to go find Ann. I'm not sure what I was expecting. A wreath of flowers...a "My Hero!" I received (and deserved) no such thing. She was glad the squirrel was caught...but still pretty frustrated that I had let it in in the first place.

The new decision was where to let it out. If I had more time to think about it, I might have considered the situation more. But appeasing Ann's agitation became my new priority ONE. So I had read that you need to release squirrels far away because they will come back. And I didn't necessarily want it hanging around. And I hadn't seen the mom in a couple of days. If I had, I might have just released it by a tree in the yard. But I hadn't, so I drove it across the street to another neighborhood with lots of nature type trails and set it free. I felt a little bad because I'm sure it was hungry. I thought about trying to slip in my baggy of peanut butter, but...I'm sure it just wanted out. I mean it risked human contact just to get out of the attic. And while I thought it was attracted to the peanut butter...I think it was really just attracted to the possibility of an exit. And the cry wasn't "I'm hungry, give me food!" It was "Get me the heck out of here!" Unless it didn't know where the smell was coming from and it really was trying to find food. Regardless, I quickly set it free and it scampered off.

And that...concludes the squirrel saga.

Epilogue:

I've seen very little of the squirrels since. In fact, the only sighting was the next evening I saw a smaller (potentially still an infant) squirrel hanging around the corner of the house that they had exited. Could have just been the one that got out to join its mom. Or it could have been the latest baby who just couldn't get enough drama from our house. Or...I guess it could have been an entirely unrelated squirrel. But I'd like to think that at least one of the babies (probably two) is alive and well, causing mischief somewhere else. Haven't seen any since that last sighting.

That evening, to get our minds off the horrors of the day we went to DC and visited some museums. I was amused by this display.



I also got to take some shots of DC. I had been wanting to take some night shots for awhile, and I brought my new monopod to try to allow for this. Sadly, most of those didn't turn out the way I would have liked, and the monopod is nice, but still can't do exposures that are too lengthy. The most focused I was able to get was about a third or half of a second. But here are some from the day.