Squirrels in the Ceiling
I have them in the roof, but generally I’m okay with that. They have to live, we encroach in on their territory. It’s messed up. But my tolerance ends when they come into my home.
I walk into my apartment and J says ‘What’s that on the floor?’ At first, a sane person thinks that the cats have been at it again, but the trained investigator in me says ‘Oh… shit. Fiberglass!’ I panic that the cats have eaten it, but also there’s the problem that it’s in the middle of the room. No walls. That means…
We look up and there it is. A hole. I had already done a little work on it, fixing a small crack, but as it turned out, the crack was not a crack, but the prelude to an invasion. I whip out the phone and get a hold of the secretary of the leasing agency.
The secretary asks if water’s coming in. No. Is there a squirrel RIGHT there? Nope. So Friday will be fine, but there’s ’stuff’ falling into the apartment and that’s bad. She agrees. Then, as I’m talking to her, there’s another chunk that falls to the floor and a squirrel pokes its nose out. I did not get a photo of the squirrel, but I took one of the noticeably larger hole. This is now am emergency.
I talk to Paul, who apologizes for laughing (no, it is funny and if it wasn’t me, I’d be laughing too). He agrees this is a problem, but to remove squirrels from the building needs a condo sign off. Alas, I hate subleasing sometimes. And sadly no one can come out till 8am Thursday. Fine. But I want the hole fixed. The fact that the exterminators are going to take a month or more to sort out how to evict my upstairs neighbors is actually okay by me. Until tomorrow, what do I do? I do packing tape, tin foil, and prayer.
Steve calls at 8am sharp. J’s home, so she can take care of it. He arrived at 8:45am. The following photos explain how he made the hole larger, put wood braces up there, mudded and taped the new drywall in, and then left us mud to give it a second coat on Friday and paint for the same on Sunday. It’s not perfect, but it’s a patch and the squirrels are freaked and avoiding it now. At least there was no dead squirrel.
And when all is said and done? It works. The clean up was a bitch. Swept, vaccumed, wet-swiffed, and then I had to go over it with Muphy’s Oil Soap, but now it’s over. For now. Round two will be with men kicking the squirrels out.
I will update you.
Tags: squirrels
May 15th, 2008 at 9:30 PM
Years and years ago we came home after a few days away to find window frames around the house chewed up… this being backwoods NH, we figured an animal had gotten in (we’ve had raccoons and snakes inside before). We finally found a squirrel down in the furnace room, and almost got bitten trying to chase it out - finally we just blocked off the area and opened a window… several hours later the squirrel was gone and we just had clean-up.
Here in the U.S. it’s squirrels and other small (and not so small - we’ve had moose in downtown Manchester) domestic animals ‘invading’ neighborhoods. In other parts of the world it’s even worse… in Indonesia, orangutans are being forced out of their natural habitats by a booming explosion of soy and rice farms. The orangs are, unfortunately, being killed if wildlife people aren’t there quickly to relocate them.
Nature is a delicate balance, and Mankind tends to upset that balance - but on the other hand, we can’t be asked to stop living or surviving. Some kind of compromise needs to be worked out.