The Hunter

The hunter crouches in his blind
'Neath camouflage of every kind
And conjures up a quacking noise
To lend allure to his decoys
This grown-up man, with pluck and luck
Is hoping to outwit a duck
-Ogden Nash

Exactly how do you get a squirrel out of the house? In this blog I've pondered over many of the great questions and thought heavily on many of the great issues of the day, but have never considered this particular problem before. That is, not until I found a squirrel in my house. Not in the attic, mind you, but in my kitchen.

I know a squirrel in the house would not be a problem for some folks. They just love the little critters. "Oooh, just wook at their puffy wittle cheeks and their bushy wittle tails." They go to the park to feed them, and long to hold them and pet them and catch all of their plaguelike diseases. "Ah, awen't they cute. We just wove the wittle squirrels, don't we? Yes we do. We just wove 'em to death."

Different story when they decide to set up household in your living room, though. Suddenly, those "cute wittle squirrels" start to look a lot more like big, fuzzy rodents with serious adjustment problems. Believe me, when you enter a room to find everything that used to be high on the shelves now littered across the floor, and little bits and pieces of that apple you stupidly left out the night before now trailed among the generous droppings of your uninvited guest, then they stop being cute real fast.

So how do you get rid of one once he has gotten in your house? We called up the Animal Control people and asked them. They told us to open a window and he'll leave eventually and good luck and don't call us anymore, ok? Well thank you very much, but I'm not sure opening a window will work. It might, assuming the squirrel is stupid, which they're not. Why would a squirrel leave a place that is warm and sheltered, with plenty of food and water, for the harsh winter weather outside? The answer is he wouldn't, so scratch that plan Mr. Animal Control person. Thank you for being so helpful.

Instead of opening a window, I fired up the computer and did some googling, and lo and behold I found the answer. In case you're wondering, here's how you get a squirrel out of the house ( just click here to go straight to the source).

The first step is to be patient. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day, so vini, vidi, vici and vox populi and all that. The bottom line is you're going to need patience. Remember, even though that squirrel is smarter than you, he's still pretty dumb. What I'm trying to say is don't expect the squirrel to fall into your clever little trap right away. Let him get hungry first, which takes time and also takes me to step two.

Isolate the S.O.B. Try as best you can to restrict the squirrel to one or two areas of the house. You can do this by closing doors or moving some furniture or whatever. Just make sure that you block him in good, and then deny him food and water. We did this by blocking off the kitchen and the upstairs area and isolating the squirrel in the family room and living room areas. We then removed every last bit of food and water, and even though squirrels are notorious for caching their food, we knew that sooner or later he was going to start getting hungry. That all led to step three.

Buy a squirrel trap. Now wait a minute, wait a minute. Before you start getting yourself up in arms and calling your local PETA representative, the squirrel trap I got is from Havahart, and it is totally humane and non-lethal. It consists of a cage with a trap door on one end and a trigger plate at the other. You bait the cage near the trigger, the animal enters the cage, steps on the trigger plate, and the trap door closes trapping the animal inside. No blood is spilled and no injury of any kind is done to the animal.

So we baited the trap and set it up near one of his favorite activity zones (as shown by the presence of numerous pellets). Then we waited. One day, two days, three days, and on and on and on, until the other evening when I walked into the house and noticed that the trap had been sprung and...

No squirrel inside. The little b*%$!#d had taken the bait and set off the trap, but still managed to make his escape. Ok, apparently this squirrel has an IQ. The kind that spends his leisure time watching PBS and reading The Atlantic Monthly. He must be getting hungry, though, so I baited the trap again and waited. Then, this afternoon, we got us a squirrel. All my patience and planning paid off.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.... Who's the genius now, Mr. Squirrel? Yeah, that's right. I may look dumb but I can still outsmart your average bushy-tailed rodent.

Now I've got him sitting in a cage outside. After all the trouble he's given me I always thought that when I finally got a hold of him I'd ring his little neck, but when I saw him sitting in the cage looking so helpless and pathetic, I had a change of heart. The exterminator people say the best thing to do with a problem squirrel is to put him down, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I mean he's so cute.

So, tomorrow I'm going up into the hills and find a nice spot to open the cage and set him free. The exterminator people said this isn't a good idea because squirrels are very territorial and if I set him free he's probably going to starve anyways because no other squirrel will have him for a neighbor. I guess that's probably true, but what else am I going to do? I'm not going to release him back into the yard and take a chance that he'll find his way back into the house. At least up in the hills he'll have a fighting chance. Live free or die, right?

Geez, now I feel so guilty.