Rats with Better PR

At 4:38 am I awoke to a relentless scritching sound.  Laying there and trying to tune my ears to the culprit my first thought was what idiot is taking their trash out 4 days early? so naturally I got up and peeked out the windows trying to find said idiot. Nope.   Hmm.  More scritching.  Above the bed........in the attic.....a squirrel. NOOOOOO!  I stood on our bed and pounded on the ceiling.  Bill, alerted by the white popcorn raining down asked what the heck I was doing.  Just asking our new tenant to pipe down so I could go back to sleep.  It didn't work.  Of course Bill went right back to sleep and I lay awake plotting revenge.  On both the squirrel and Bill. 

We haven't had an issue with random rodent occupancy since we had the house exterior redone about 4 years ago. And that was prompted by some flippin chipmunks that we had started calling Chippy East and Chippy West.


Chippy



Maddie

 

   Chippy East had chewed out a lovely home for himself close to the gas meter and Chippy West had a lovely 2 story in the exterior of our garage with a view of a backyard golf green.  I can only imagine her little furry realtor telling her what a great place to raise kids, a yard, the schools are great,  it's all about location, location, location.   Chippy West had  raised several litters of chippettes that summer. And although they were very cute I knew they had stored enough seeds and nuts behind that wall to last thru whatever disasters they had been warned about thru their own Chippy News Network.   One of which must have been it's better to be in the wall then hanging around in the yard waiting to be lunch for Mr. Hawk.  Which I have witnessed and I must say is pretty awesome except for the soundtrack.  At one point we even tried to just have some piece work done and a carpenter came by and put new wood over the hole.  However he did not look in the hole to see if they were out collecting any more seeds and nuts.  He assumed they were out for the day.  He assumed incorrectly.  I sat down in a chair to read a book and the scritching began in earnest. And I'm pretty sure I heard some chipmunk cussing.  I was horrified.  When I called Bill he could tell I was panicked because I said " that stupid **&*&^ carpenter sealed up those *&^&* chimunks in the %^$$$% wall".  I often speak in amperstands and astricks to get my point across.  To which he said " well, they'll die and the problem is solved".  To which I replyed "only if you are planning to buy another house that won't smell like death for 6 months".  And then Bill said he had real work to do and to deal with it.  Which I did with a crowbar.

And then I had to call the carpenter back.  Before Bill got home from work. 

Off to get my crowbar.  It's you and me squirrel.