StevenLaura

Pictures will come, I promise...
More news on the "new home" front, though.

1 -- We bought CURTAINS! Now I can change in my bedroom. This is a very good thing. The very BAD thing is that we don't have an electric drill, and we discovered the wood around our windows is VERY hard, making the "puting up curtains" process difficult.

2 -- We have furry house guests! The nice thing about having a family of squirrels living in the roof above your bathroom/hallway is that you are often unexpectedly serinaded by the pitter patter of little feet. Since I've been dreaming (off and on) for the past year about hearing the pitter patter of little feet around my house, you'd think this would make me happy. Somehow it's not quite like I expected, however. On the plus side, I now know what a squirrel sounds like! (Earlier today there was one talking to us through the ceiling fan in the bathroom, about a foot above our heads.) It's not so much "squeeker squeek squeek squeekum," like Disney portrays, so I was a little thrown off.

I saw Mama Squirrel outside my window while battling with the screw driver. We had a heart-to-heart through eye contact. Knowing that my Disney-learned "Squirrel" dialect was ill-informed, and not having been exposed to true squirrel long enough to have mastered it, I figured eye-contact would have to do. From what I could gather, here's how the conversation went:

Laura (L): "So YOU'RE the reason my bathroom has smelt faintly of urine on and off for the past week! You really have made my life not-so-fun, you know."
Mama Squirrel (MS): "Is that a face over yonder beyond the window glare?" (tilts head)
L: "You do realize we have to live right below you, right? It would be very kind of you if you would please take your dirty work outside from now on." (See how polite I was?)
MS: "I think it is a face. Is it safe for me to sneak into my home? Perhaps I better just stay still. Maybe if I don't move, the scary creature won't see me."
L: (slightly distracted) "This stupid screw won't screw in! GRRRR..."
MS: "My belly itches. The face isn't coming any closer. I will itch."
L: "You're a MAMA squirrel!"
MS: "How could you tell?"
L: "Alright, now that you've acknowledged my existence, would you please stop peeing in the insulation? You've got a whole YARD here!"
MS: "MM... that looks like something good to eat between my toes. I will eat it. Well, better start grooming. My fur's getting a touch filthy."

Feeling that our conversation was getting no where, I returned to my drilling, only to find Mama Squirrel gone when I looked up again.

So, I'm not sure our eye-conversation was terribly productive. Outside of learning to speak squirrel fluently (I start school in a week and a half and don't think I'll have time) anyone have any ideas for how to get rid of a nest full of squirrels? We have no access through the attic to the area they are living in, which complicates things slightly, and all the ideas I can think of are not only inhumane (which I'm not really worried about right now) they would also potentially make our whole space smell a LOT WORSE than it does now. (THIS is my true and purely selfish concern.)

Ah, life is an adventure! Fleas and flooding last year, Squirrels and ...? this year.