Ever wake up in the middle of the night from an anxiety dream worried that squirrels have gotten loose in your attic, and are gnawing so loudly you think they are inside your cranium? Welcome to Rodentia-land!
Our summer began with the annual installation of not one, but two, birdfeeders—the traditional one in the backyard hanging from a spruce branch and a new one hanging from the bedroom window, deployed so my wife can awake each morning to the sound of birdsong.
We marked the progression of the season from purple finches and song sparrows in spring to summer’s goldfinch aerialists and morning doves that coo to each other while feeding on the seeds dropped from the bedroom window feeder above.
It is all very pastoral; our regular little production of “All Creatures Great and Small.”
It further happens that this is our first summer sans cats. The last of my wife’s six cats she brought into the marriage—or should I say that I learned to love before I was brought into the marriage—is gone. The ranks of the cats began thinning four or five years ago, with the last two—a bother and sister who outlived their mother and all their other litter mates—passing on this past fall and spring.
But the dog is still young and spry and likes to race around with his stuffed squirrel in his jaws and has helped discourage the denizens of “Wild Kingdom” from approaching the house too closely.
You would be surprised how quickly a golden retriever can tire of chasing a red squirrel to please his owner. Or how quickly a red squirrel can solve the time and velocity equation to calculate the acceptably safe distance between a canine’s canines and a hidey-hole under the deck.
By August, the dog, sprawled on the back deck, would barely raise an eyebrow as the cheeky squirrels paraded within inches of his slack jaws.
On those occasions when the squirrels would actually scurry into a crevice under the deck, I can only imagine Nutkin’s reaction: “Hey, Rocky, will you look at this—there’s a secret passage here into the magic kingdom”¦”
And so in they went, we discovered one morning shortly before daylight, when Rocky and Nutkin began scuttling down the bedroom walls from the attic to their secret door below.
Locating the magic door at the corner of the house where the foundation stones met the sill was easy; they had gotten so bold that they simply sat at the corner of the house 10 feet from the feeder overhead and ate themselves silly before scurrying into the hole and up the walls in broad daylight. Nah, nah-nah, nah, nah.
With that hole plugged, we thought our dream life would improve. Instead, the sounds of rodents in the cranium returned night after night. So we went to war.
Armed with hammer, saw, nails, steel wool and mothballs, we attacked the garden shed attached to the back of the house where we had discovered caches of sunflower seeds.
We emptied the shed, which proved to provide a network of onramps into the house. The garden shed had not been emptied for at least three decades and we uncovered all manner of UV-degraded coils of pot warp, broken stakes, rusted tomato hoops, pilfered seed bags and bits of insulation—an entire cornucopia of wonders to feed, bed, hide and house the citizens of Rodentia.
We stuffed steel wool into the warren of entry holes, took aluminum flashing and quarters and spackled them in place to expertly plug the entry holes and boarded everything over with planks and cedar shingles hammered neatly into place. And finally we dropped mothballs from the attic eves inside the walls until we heard them strike resoundingly at the footings three floors down. Take that!
Early the following morning, the frantic scurrying of little claws in the attic and walls began again, only this time from the other side of the house. So we went back into battle and emptied the woodshed next to the garden shed—and wow! There were a half-dozen little domes of daylight illuminating another set of on ramps from the back porch into our magic kingdom.
Using the same strategies and tools, we went to work again, but now had the departing ferry schedule to worry about. We divided to conquer; one continued with steel wool, shingles and boards along the foundation, both inside and out, while the other went to the dump with multiple bags of effluvia carefully collected during three decades of wasting nothing that could be stored in the garden and wood sheds.
And tick, tick, tick went the ferry clock.
We finished just in time, got in line and on the ferry, feeling that we had achieved a notable victory in the rodent war. But just to be sure, the satisfied summer homeowner went to check the Internet for any additional useful information.
He discovered an entire website—actually a warren of websites dedicated to squirrel removal—including one titled Squirrel-attic.com.
The author, a font of politically correct advice—”It is my goal to be as humane as possible to these remarkable and cute creatures”—imparted several tips, including this caution: “I get inundated with squirrel emails. I don’t mind your questions, but I don’t respond every day.”
OK, but with a sickening feeling, the homeowner also uncovered this biological factoid that wiped the smirk off his face: “Female squirrels give birth to two litters of young per year, one in summer, and one in winter. The exact time of birth can vary a bit based on several factors, but generally the winter litter is born in early February and the summer litter in September. Much of the time, the female makes a leaf and twig nest high up in a tree. If she can find a hollow tree, that’s even better. If she can find an attic, that’s better still.”
And then this disturbing admonition: “When blocking holes to prevent squirrels and other animals from gaining access, be sure that none are trapped inside. Adults can cause severe damage by chewing to regain entrance to reach their young.”
We’ll be returning immediately to open all the doors and hope the rodents we have carefully trapped inside before they have to chew their way out of the magic kingdom prison.
Philip Conkling is the founder of the Island Institute and does battle—humanely—with squirrels on Vinalhaven.