When the doorbell pealed on Saturday, I felt like the Cavalry had finally arrived.
It was one minute to eight a.m., and only their telephone promise that they'd be there at eight kept me in my new home the long night before. It was a night when I dared not venture outside of my firmly closed bedroom door, especially not to the kitchen.
It was not Dracula keeping me afraid to step foot in my own kitchen, but seven squirrels. Looking to settle in for the winter, they had come down through the sofits and into the house over the kitchen sink.
You'd think the aliens had arrived!
On their first visit, we only knew that something had been in the house and originally thought one of the raccoons had surreptiously slinked in through a patio door. One look at the plaster in and around the kitchen sink, we looked up above to find the hole they had burrowed through.
Canada Free Press IT whiz Brian Thompson had come over to hook my PC up to a printer. "Don't worry, I'll get a big piece of wood, cover up the hole and they'll never come back," Brian announced, looking up at the hole. Nailing a thick piece of wood he found in the garage over the hole, he departed for the office.
Half an hour later, I was in the kitchen when I heard a distinct scratching noise and then something plop on the floor behind me. Not bothering to look behind to see what it was, I yelled for my 12-lb. Yorkie mix, Kiko. Kiko took one look at my anguished face, and made a beeline for the stairs leading to the downstairs living room. The two of us fought each other to be first in making it downstairs to safety.
"Thanks, Kiko for being such a courageous guard dog," I said after catching my breath. In a few moments, I cautiously crept up to the top of the stairs to slam the door shut leading to the basement.
Kiko and I were holed up in relative luxury. We had the fireplace, some waiting hard wood, and a door leading to the great outdoors should there be another panic,
The commotion overhead told me our unwelcome guests were now cavorting in the guest room.
Wishing I had eaten something, I poured myself a rum and coke in a beer stein at the wet bar that's been my home office since moving to the Beaches. The bar is my office not because of the demon rum but because the bar stool I perch on overlooks the patio and the magnificent oak trees in the backyard.
Sipping my libation, I hit the Internet to find out what could be done about squirrels inside the house.
Diurnal by nature, they won't return to the outside at night if caught inside, advised one site. You have to wait it out for morning and open a door. Since it was getting dark, I thought this would be a good time for a second rum and coke. "I wish they were vampires," said I to myself.
according to Net information, any squirrel can gnaw its way through most anything given half an hour.
"How could Teresa Heinz-Kerry have named her private airplane, the "Flying Squirrel" I thought resentfully and somewhat perversely.
Slightly tipsy from alcohol on an empty stomach, I decided to telephone CFP associate Editor arthur Weinreb, who has a cat named Scribbs and a great sense of humour.
I decided not to ask art to lend me tough-guy Scribbs because it sounded like more than one squirrel frolicking up and down the upstairs hallway.
Eventually Brian returned, stuffed some mothballs into the hole over the kitchen sink and boarded it up again. He saw no critters, he yelled to me from the top of the stairs, but did find lots of their droppings leading a trail up to a previously untorn window screen in the guest room.
We decided to call Ontario Pro-Pest Management Services Inc., who promised to be there 8 o'clock in the morning. We holed up in front of the fireplace playing gin rummy late into the night.
Brian, Kiko and myself greeted wildlife specialist Bruce Radford and his boss at the door. They patiently explained how they would seal off the sofits with wire and close off the hole over the kitchen sink. The whole idea would be to provide an exit for the nesting family of squirrels but keep them from ever getting back in.
They weren't in the least put off about my cowardice regarding common, garden-variety squirrels.
When I related the story about how Kiko had raced to beat me down the stairs to safety, Radford said, "I have the feeling Kiko's a pretty good guard dog anyway, because I haven't noticed a single bear around the house."
When I told him I had been thinking of abandoning the house altogether rather than sharing it with rodents, he told me I wouldn't be the first.
"I know of one case where a guy abandoned a $3-million mansion all because he thought there were squirrels in the walls."
Don't know whether it was related to make me feel less foolish, but Radford said one of the critters had jumped at his hand when he was trying to close the hole off. "There's squirrels all over Toronto, but yours are crazy," he said,
Soon after the departure of the Calvary, a slightly timid cook returned to a kitchen from which the smell of a squirrel-less Thanksgiving dinner began to waft.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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