Squirrel!!

February 23, 2021 Late yesterday afternoon, I had heard the squirrel in the rafters, and then it scooted down the open innards of the house…. I soft-footed it down the stairs, hoping I could sneak by it to open the front doors, and maybe chase it out. But there it was, blocking my path and randomly running about the main floor amidst the rubble! I couldn’t believe it!!! It must have come in through the open hatch… I felt like I was having a bad dream… maybe it was an attack squirrel, why was it on the stairs, looking at me?? National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation Squirrel scene!

I got around it finally, got the front door open, and when back in the apartment tried to get Bob’s attention away from his concall, mouthing “squirrel, squirrel”, waving my arms and pointing toward the apartment door. He shrugged and shooed me away (later, he wouldn’t have believed it without my photos!), so I went in search of the so far useless Havahart trap. If you believe the internet, everyone but me catches animals in them!

Fast forward to this morning, where there was nothing in the trap, big surprise. John and his assistant Alec arrived to show us plans, and we spent a few extremely useful hours going through them and walking the garage-basement floor, the main floor and ending up in the main bedroom. The rest would have to wait until tomorrow. Notes and drawings were flying as we all had great ideas about how to maximize the space and make it ours. Yes, it WAS the architect team that opened the hatch, and apparently did not secure the latch properly. Apologies all around, they definitely were a bit embarrassed (dare I say “sheepish”?), especially when they heard about the squirrel antics!

We were walking down the stairs from the guest bedroom to the library/office landing, when I suddenly stopped in my tracks, pointed and let out a squeak of my own! There. There it was!! Laying against the wall, on an area of joists with little sturdy support underneath…. the SQUIRREL! All four of us thought it was dead, but we couldn’t be sure…. I pulled out my phone for photos, and Bob stepped carefully on the joists to retrieve it…..

We were all basically exclaiming OMG with horrified expressions on our faces, while our hero Bob donned his trusty work gloves and disposed of the carcass…. how could it just die like that overnight? Not that we were actually complaining, come to think of it!