Thursday, July 26, 2007

He's Back

My friend Rocky returned last evening for some fun. Sue and I were just wrapping up an episode on the Law and Order channel and were thinking about heading off to bed when I heard a skittering noise to my right. I looked to see nothing. A few seconds later, something caught my eye to the left. I turned to see another flying squirrel running along the top of the other couch.

While I have a primal fear of bats for some reason and become incapacitated when they're flying around my head, I'm better at handling flying squirrels. It's probably because they're so darn cute. We launched into action.

"Do we have a net of any sort?" Nope. "How about using the blanket as a net?" "Oh, how about a box from the basement?"

We pulled the doors to the parlor closed to at least contain him to one room and I went and grabbed a box and a garbage bag. I realized quickly that the garbage bag would be pretty useless but I was grasping for ideas. Our best plan was to shoo him into the box and then quickly close it up. In hindsight, I realize we were not considering the fact that a flying squirrel's reflexes are roughly 8x10^9 times faster than ours.

Sue grabbed a broom and the dust mop to serve as pokers and we went to work. We got him pinned in one corner and Sue held the box down with the open end towards Rocky as I shooed him in that direction. Just as it looked like he was going to run into the box, he launched straight up in the air, over the open end and directly towards Sue's face. I've never heard her scream like that before. Imagine the squirrel's experience. Two massive beasts a thousand times bigger than you chase you around while one screams bloody murder and the other laughs uproariously. Terrifying, no doubt.

We basically chased him from corner to corner to corner for about half an hour, trying to get him into a box. I cut a small squirrel hole in another box hoping he'd run into it thinking it was a great hiding place. No dice. They're smarter than you might think. Sue became convinced that throwing a blanket on him like a net would be a great idea. We worked him back into a corner, she got ready, and I flushed him out. She threw down the blanket and we quickly secured the edges. Unfortunately, she'd also captured a gallon jug that had water in it from the ironing we were doing earlier. We slowly smoothed out the blanket, being careful not to step on it and checking for any moving lumps. We got it down to only the area around the covered jug and then slowly worked the blanket up and over the jug. No lumps, no movement. No squirrel. The entire time we'd been carefully working on the blanket, Rocky was sitting on top of the couch behind us watching. Apparently, flying squirrels also have the power of teleportation.

I got the bright idea to open the window and remove the screen. If we could just get him to climb up and out the window... right, no problem. We spent several minutes with him hiding in a corner behind a speaker and us moving some furniture out of the room and overturning other furniture so he couldn't hide underneath it. We stacked pillows under the window to give him something to climb on. We then chased him around for a few minutes with no good results. We removed the pillows and propped up the screen as a ramp for him to run up and out. More chasing. Nope. Every so often, he'd duck down into a three-sided picture frame we have on a table and we'd try to trap him in it with the broom. He was too quick and smart for that too. We'd get close and he'd leap up and out. It was obvious that he was well aware of when he was about to be cornered, and he was more willing to run straight at us towards open space than to duck and cover. At one point, Sue was holding the screen horizontally and he jumped onto it and ran right towards her hands. Screen and squirrel were jettisoned into the air, one crashing down, the other gliding gently to the corner of the room.

After a few more minutes, I was shooing him off a table with a broom and he jumped onto the bristles. I swung him towards the window, but he leapt off midway and flew across the room between us. So close. Finally, after a total of forty-five minutes of squirrel chasing, he leapt onto the broom again. With Sue jumping around and screaming "Throw it out the window! Throw the whole broom out the window!", I finally got him poked out the window and he disappeared into the night.


We snapped a couple photos of the aftermath and of one of the warriors displaying her weapons, and then put all the furniture back in place. All in all, it was very entertaining, but not the most relaxing evening I've ever had. It might be time to invest in a fishing net or two.

3 Comments:

At 4:20 PM, Blogger Michael said...

Dear Tim and Susan,

I enjoy reading your blogs and find them quite entertaining as I am also into bikes, cars, old houses, and getting rid of critters around the place. Sounds like you need the services of my dog. He is a Decker Giant Rat Terrier and is quicker than a squirrel as he caught three of them within just a few days last summer. He has also done away with seven woodchucks in the past few years and just the other night got a skunk, and the skunk also got him. This summer he has been working on ridding the yard of moles, and during the spring he got the biggest rat in the world. That's not a problem for him as he is the biggest rat terrier in the world. The only thing that has a chance is a sleeping oppossum, as there is a local one that he has caught five times, but still lives. In any case, best of luck with keeping the squirrels at bay and let me know if my dog can help.

Michael Clark

 
At 10:20 AM, Blogger Tim Bingham said...

Wow, he sounds like an accomplished ratter and having a dog like him around sounds like a nice benefit. Sue's not crazy about dogs though, and I developed an allergy to cats, so unless we get a bird of prey in the house, I guess we'll just have to deal with the critters ourselves!

 
At 5:29 PM, Blogger Vicky said...

HAHAHAHA
awwwwwwwwww
that is so cute!!!!

 

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