Under Attack

Over the last couple of weeks, we have experienced a couple of random events.  First, the dormers on our home -- the ones we just had repaired and painted in October/November -- have issues again.  When our contractor initially evaluated the job, his theory was that we had some type of rodent chewing on the wood.  I mumbled something about squirrels, but I chose not to really hear/accept that and, instead, stuck with the theory that the wood needed to be replaced after 18 years.  Now it appears that some wood has chipped away in a couple of places, you know, again.

Second, (and this is not for the squeamish), we discovered a deceased squirrel in our driveway last weekend.  We have lived here for six years, and this is our first time to discover anything in the driveway.  My suspicion is that s/he might have chewed into a live wire, as the occurrence took place close to our power lines.

Third, last Thursday night I had the girls upstairs getting dressed in their leotards for dance.  Skip called up to us from the basement, via the monitor intercom, to see if we were all still upstairs because he heard something, a "skittering" sound, on the main level.  I heard a similar sound tonight from the roof.  A quick check of our alcoves did not reveal any squirrel invasion, but clearly we had a rodent on the roof looking for some tasty, newly painted wood. 

Fourth, today we were alerted to a squirrel attempting to enter the master bathroom via the French door.  He was chewing all along the bottom of the door, and, upon inspection of the door exterior, he managed to nibble away a good section of the wood.

The squirrels have always been troublesome on this lot, but they have only served as a nuisance previously.  Their damage was limited to emptying/destroying all of the bird feeders and eating pounds and pounds of bird seed.  Also, there was that time or two that they chewed through all of our cable wires, creating loss of Internet service and interruption of cable television service.  Now we are under full blown attack.  They are damaging our home! 

I love animals.  I really do.  If I find a ladybug in our home, I gently get the fellow back outside.  I usually put them on our topiaries and wish them good health and good times.  The number of stray animals I have brought home with me is a high number.  I do not resort to an aggressive response easily.  Squirrels are rodents, and these particular rodents are damaging the structure of our home and costing us many, many dollars.  (When our contractor repairs the dormers again, it will likely be $300, and replacing our French doors would be at least $1500.)  The fact that we can see 5-6 large squirrel nests in the trees next to our home means that solving this problem by setting traps is probably a futile effort.  I pitched an idea wherein we could acquire a couple of Labrador retrievers, as I am sure that would solve the squirrel encroachment.  Skip vetoed that plan.  Instead, we are declaring war.  Skip went to an outdoor store today and purchased a hefty pellet gun (our neighborhood would frown on anything stronger), and we plan to eliminate our squirrel problem.  I would really prefer it if we could fire some warning shots in the air, and have the squirrels acknowledge our re-claim of our turf and back further into the woods.  But I'm thinking it won't go down that way.  They are an aggressive, destructive pack of squirrels.

As Skip was checking out, he mentioned to the sales associate, "We've got a squirrel problem."  The associate scanned the pellet gun and, with the gun still in his hands, said, "You ain't got one now."  Let's hope that proves to be true.