Squirrel! Chimney!
Right now we’re having the Drama of the Squirrel Down the Chimney, clawing at the flue. As Robert said, it’s like something out of Edgar Allan Poe, with long fingernails scritch scritch scritching at the underside of the coffin lid. Brrr!
Buddy Bear the YorkiePoo is heroic. He keeps telling me There’s something in the chimney, Mom! He barks and grrrrrs to punctuate his alarm, acts like he’s ready to take all his seven pounds into battle. Robert says No Way—a hysterical squirrel could tear the pup’s face off.
My liege lord has now gone to Lowe’s to buy a rope, which he will lower down the chimney so the squirrel can climb up and back to freedom. I suspect that he (Robert, not the squirrel) is actually enjoying this. He’s been humming the theme to Mighty Mouse. I’m anxious about his being up on the roof, especially at night, but he valiantly assured me that he’ll set up a tall light stand and one of his 1000-watt photo lights.
I should probably charge admission.
Meantime I’ll be cowering in the garden room or our bedroom, with Buddy beside me, because if the little bastard doesn’t shut up pretty soon I’ll shove him up the chimney. I mean, he’s been trying to catch a squirrel all his three years …
When Buddy first alerted me this afternoon, I put him down for a nap and then fled to the office to meet with my 5:30 client. But I called Robert and said, “I am terrified to go back in that house without you.” I mean, that frantic scrabbling of rodent claws on the metal damper is horrible—both scary and pitiful. I even lined up friends for all three of us to bunk with (GOOD friends!), till I realized how silly that was.
So now I’m hiding out with the TV on high volume. Robert just stuck his head in the bedroom door and said the rope is in place, but so still is the squirrel. If the little dude hasn’t exited by morning, Robert the Squirrel Hunter plans to pull the rope up, smear it with peanut butter to get the squirrel started, then lower it again. He currently has put a small flashlight just inside the chimney top, so the squirrel can Go To The Light.
Lord. I hope it’s a squirrel. It could actually be a very large rat! He recently found a dead one near our tightly closed trash bins, with its throat torn out. At first we thought Buddy had finally caught and killed something, which broke my heart, but an experienced pet owner said Naaaah, if the Budster had killed it, he’d be trotting around the yard showing it off. It was probably a cat.
But … a few years ago our next door neighbor Julie had a BOBcat on her back deck, tufted ears and all. She called animal control, and a young woman showed up holding an aluminum pole with a noose on the end of it. Julie eyed it and asked, “What’s your plan … for the bobcat to come stick its head in there?” Of course, it was long gone by then. At first I doubted Julie’s identification, but she is an extremely pragmatic woman, not at all given to hysteria like … well, it develops, like Moi. Besides, we read a couple of days later about a bobcat spotted only a few miles from here.
So I’ve got a scritching scrabbling large rodent in my chimney, a derring-do husband planning peanut butter treats, the possibility of a rat invasion from the creek, and the memory of a bobcat big enough to carry Buddy off.
I can’t have a drink on my new diet, so I guess I’ll take a couple of melatonins and try to think happy thoughts at bedtime. I can hear a sarcastic voice in my head saying, “Good luck with that, duckie.”
‘Night.
