Monday Day 72 2010

So I come home and check my carefully laid traps. Queue my best evil villain victory laugh, muahaha! I have caught you Mr. Squirrel. Why don't you just sit there while I look up recipes for squirrel stew and tell you my plot to take over the world which is safe for you to know for the few minutes you have left since it is impossible for you to escape my clutches, make your way back to the squirrel army, lead a strike force back to steal my flux capacitors, and destroying me in an emotionally satisfying manner to make the audience happy while leaving a tiny bit of doubt about the finality of my end in case the studio green-lights a sequel in which I come back horribly scared and looking for revenge.

So perhaps it's a bad idea to indulge in elaborate revenge fantasies, particularly ones which involve elaborate mechanical deaths which I don't have time to watch and which you will inevitably escape from.

So  here is the deal. I am going to drive you to a much more expensive zip code and drop you next to a tree that has a nice park view and probably costs more than my entire house all by itself. So let's not have any ill will here Mr. Squirrel. I don't want to worry about squirrel ninjas cutting a hole in the ceiling above my bed and diving on me as I am sleeping with sharpened teeth and claws. If that should happen... let's just say I did bookmark that recipe for squirrel stew.

Sunday Day 71 2010

The day started with a trip by Starbucks to get my passport stamped. Buy one coffee a week and end up with a free pound of coffee. There is a promotion I can get my caffeine habit around. I then met up with a friend to go see Alice in Wonderland. Afterwards I came home and started mucking around in the computer when once again I heard the pitter-patter of little feat above my head.

There is nothing I like less than hearing the pitter-patter of uninvited guests above my head. I've been wondering what was making the pitter-patter and nothing that came to mind has been pleasing. Honestly I was kind of hoping it was squirrels, but I was worried it was rats. So yesterday I hear the pitter-patter again, go up into the attic, and find staring back at me from a across the attic a squirrel who is just standing there looking at me, pretty as you please, "Hi human, I like your house, nice of you to be sharing with me, it's a blustery day outside, I sure do like hanging out in your warm attic!" Well at least it was a squirrel and not some large sewer rat or something.

So I take an existing no-kill trap baiting with month-old peanut butter and stick it down at that end of the attic. I go downstairs and spend the next couple of hours listening to the squirrel scurry around my trap. I cannot stand it anymore, I check the trap. Somehow he's ignored it, not a fan of stale peanut butter I guess. I get in the car and go to Publix to look for tastier squirrel bait or at least a fresh jar of peanut butter. I come home and prepare my bait. I have a trap downstairs which I make ready for battle and I prepare fresh bait for the trap upstairs. I go up the stairs and carefully make my way back to the far reaches of the attic to set my traps. As I get toward the far end where the roof comes down to meet the top of the rafters I am obligated to lay on  my stomach and stretch out to get the traps where I want them. So I am in this position trying to set these darn traps when the insulation in front of me twitches and it takes a few seconds for me to register that insulation does not twitch all by itself. It twitches when there is something under it.

Perhaps a braver man would have lifted up the insulation twelve inches from the tip of his nose and said hello to his house guest. Not me. I figure the last thing I want to be is laying on my belly in the attic twelve inches from an annoyed squirrel looking at him eye to eye. I carefully finished setting baiting and setting my traps and quietly backed away leaving Mr. Squirrel to his nap.