Cute Little Dead Squirrel
Oct/091
The Mrs. and I started going for walks together recently. We’re both part of the over thirty-five club and can’t quite keep our slender figures without making some sort of attempt to stay in shape. While my occupation requires me to spend a vast amount of my workday roaming around, she, unfortunately is tethered to her computer and workstation at the house. Occasionally, she takes a trip downstairs to do some laundry, but, for the most part, she has a busy sedentary job that is very unforgiving when it comes to trying to burn off a few extra calories from a cream cheese covered bagel.
She has been busting my balls forever to accompany her on a brisk daily walk to help her add some exercise to her weight control plan, and, while I do feel for her and her lack of physical activity, my FIVE hour brisk daily walk leaves me feeling completely unexcited about doing it recreationally. I broke down, though, and now we walk and talk for about forty-five minutes a night. It really isn’t too bad, and I probably should have done it with her years ago. Sometimes even, like most recently, you come across a special find while trekking across the suburbs. My particular find came from not money or treasure or even a glimpse of some fresh boobies through a bedroom window, but a squished, flat as a pancake squirrel.
“Special treasure?” You might say. To which I would respond, “You’re motherfuckin’ god-damned right special treasure!”, because I hate them.
I didn’t always. I thought that they were cute just like everybody else. I watched them frolick around at the park while watching the kids play or when having a picnic, and found them quite amusing when I would throw a piece of sandwich near them and watch them stand upright and eat with their delightfully adorable little hands. I treated their kind well and we lived harmoniously together until they drew first blood, by deciding to move into a cozy and spacious man-made tree that I like to call “my house.” Initially, I wasn’t all that worried. I had read that squirrels in the attic will chew on wiring and cause problems, but, being an electrician, I was completely capable of correcting such an issue. Due to this, I procrastinated on removing the rodent for a couple weeks. Eventually, I acquired a live trap, baited it, captured the tresspasser, and released him a few miles away at a park. He was scared, but free to start a new life in a different locale.
The very next day, I patched the small hole in the roof overhang where he had found access into the attic. Life was peaceful for a couple weeks before the familiar echoed scurrying from above intruded upon our Sunday night viewing of Entourage. The night was restless, and I eagerly anticipated getting home from work the following day so I could inspect the attic space and quickly prevent this new squirrel from making a home. Apparantly, my patch job wasn’t adequate, for this particular squirrel was a bit more destructive, and had chewed the small hole out making a bigger, more gaping access hole into my tree home. After searching in the attic for signs of the squirrels presence and finding none, I closed the hole up with more drastic measures. I retrieved some large metal conduit clamps from my work van and fabricated an impenetrable gate across the makeshift entrance. Pleased with myself I cleaned up and commenced my evening lounging time. I was even more pleased when, that evening, the annoying pest made numerous attempts, judging from the furious scrambling noises that we heard outside, to gain entrance and failing miserably. I had won, or so I thought.
We were squirrel free for a few weeks before we got the first whiff of the disgusting odor permeating through our house. It was the familiar smell of rotted meat, and we immediately began interrogating the children about an improperly stashed dinner. They insisted on their innocence, though, and all attempts to uncover unused food came up empty. As the odor became increasingly worse, a conversation with a colleague developed into a reasonable theory. He had previously seen a not so smart squirrel venture into the uncharted sanctity of a plumbing vent. This vertical pipe ultimately finds it’s way into the sewer and serves the purpose of allowing noxious gas from uncountable shits to safely exit from the roof and into the atmosphere. In short, not a good hiding place. With no other explanation, I could only assume that my squirrel must have also chose unwisely and found himself in the unfortunate circumstance of being trapped in a shit tube.
The smell went away, and we were ecstatic to be able to comfortably breath in our house once more. To further dispute any argument that a squirrel had embedded himself in the vent, my wife had the wonderful experience of witnessing an army of maggots escaping from the shower drain in true Poltergeist fashion. While we are positive, at this point, that the skeletal remains of a semi-retarded dead squirrel is now a permanent artifact in our house’s plumbing, we can only hope that it serves as a warning to “all thee rodents who enter here.”