Attack of the Giant Squirrels

There are very few earthly creatures that cause problems for me. I am not afraid of spiders. Mice freak me out but I don’t see them very often so I’m ok with them continuing to live. But for some reason, squirrels have it out for me and they have forced me to say the feeling is mutual.

This dates back to my college years when the 10-pound campus squirrels seemed tame around students, until the squirrels decided to charge their moving targets. You could hear screams from the sidewalk around the pond from grown men and women. Some of them still have intense squirrel phobias today.

It’s my neighborhood squirrels, however, are the cause of my dislike for the entire species. They’ll sit on our backyard fence, eating an apple stolen from a neighbor’s tree and hiss and whistle at me. They know how far my dog’s chain will reach and they sit exactly one foot farther than that on the grass and taunt him.

 

That is good behavior compared to what they have done now. Recently we’ve heard the giant squirrels tap dancing on our roof, usually around 2 a.m. They will run back and forth over our heads as we sleep, sometimes causing my husband to stand up and give the ceiling a few good wacks. They’ll tone it down for a while, but they always come back. We examined the scene outside and came to the conclusion that they were walking the cable tightrope or flying through the trees to land on the roof.

Apparently, it’s not the roof that they’ve been after all this time.

Last weekend I was visiting with my in-laws in the driveway when I could hear two squirrels chasing each other on what sounded like metal. Turns out they had somehow gained access to the soffit on the top floor of the house and were using it as their own personal gerbil tube. I was horrified. I think they were listening to the disgust in my voice, because as soon as I was done cursing them, they went to the corner seam in the gutter system and started heckling me from two stories above. This is unacceptable.

Before we had time to figure out exactly how they were gaining access to their personal play land, a few days had come and gone. They woke me at 2 a.m. on a school night with their tick-tick-tick against the metal. I imagined they were either paranoid or drunk as I could hear them racing and then coming to a screeching halt and then laughing at themselves and each other.

It also sounds like they have some baggage with them as occasionally I will hear a nut roll down the slope of the gutter. Goodness, they are preparing to live with us for the winter. Something needs to be done.

I know we’re supposed to love all of God’s creatures, but I might need to cash in some sort of a pass on this one. I also need to find a way to shut down the giant gerbil tube in the sky. Those squirrels will be so disappointed, but that’s the least of my worries.