The Squirrel Chronicles are Back…

Nov 22

Let me tell you a story about…Squirrels!
This story begins with a brief recap of last year: Squirrels invaded our home and nested right above our bed. They gnawed and clawed day and night at our sanity and almost succeeded in reducing us to drooling maniacs. Well, three months after they moved in our landlord finally did something useful and the squirrels disappeared. Enough with the recap. Let’s begin with this years trial.

It all began two days after Deyen was born. We arrived home that Sunday and breathed a huge sigh, we were home and could rest, well at least a little better than at the hospital. That night the scurrying began. At first, it was just that, scurrying in and out, running around and just making a general slightly annoying, but not a sleep-disrupting noise. So, we got on the ball and called our landlord right away and asked him to come by and look at the place they were getting in last time and just to check out the roof to see if he could see anything.

Well, a week later we called him again and then a couple days after that he came by. Not the most responsive landlord to this type of situation. So, the first thing he said is that it’s the neighbours problem. This is not something new. He blamed them last time. Last time it wasn’t their fault. But this time, he pointed to a few holes in the roof [see picture below] where he proposed they were getting in. It actually looked plausible. However, I wasn’t going to risk it. I needed him to actually LOOK at his house and inspect HIS side of the house and then make a reasonable decision.

Well…after he briefly and semi-decently inspected the old hole and other sites in that area, he concluded again that it was NOT his problem. I told him that the squirrels
weren’t bothering our neighbours, they were bothering US, that made it his problem. I then agreed to talk with our neighbours, who are unbelievably reasonable people. And they agreed that they needed to do something about it. So, we talked about it and then decided to talk to my landlord again to see if he had any connections in the siding business, because it is such a small siding job a lot of company’s will charge a minimum (which in my opinion is stupid) of a few hundred just to do that one piece. Well, my landlord said that the guy he got to do his siding agrees, the job is small and very low priority. However he said it is on his list, just at the bottom and so we’re just gonna have to wait.

So, we were ok with that, thinking that it would only be a week maybe two.

Well, 4 weeks later the squirrels were starting to get much
much worse. They were going at the beams above our bed tooth and nail. So, Jenn has an epiphany and asks me to call our landlord and just ask him to put up a temporary solution for two reasons:

1) for him to actually get off his butt and deal with this
infestation, and…

2) to find out if the squirrels were actually getting in that
way.

So, the call was made, the landlord agreed and, wait for it…10 days later! he finally showed up to deal with the problem. 10 days! Unbelievable. In fact we had to remind him. Any way…after he “temporarily fixed” the holes, he threw in some more mothballs (whooopee!) and left.

Well, look at what I saw when I got home from work! [look down]

a slightly blurry shot –>

Wellity, wellity, wellity. If it ain’t the monsters themselves. I had a hunch that there was more than one. And sure enough, there was. I called our landlord back and let him know that his solution (to nail the metal into the hole) would be made short work of by these three monsters. Hopefully I will only have good news to report on from here on in. Thank you for reading this. I hope you don’t have any pests of your own and if you do, I really pray that you have a sympathetic, realistic landlord.

One last look at the devil for ya!