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In Da House!

I have a story for you. It’s a funny, although slightly disturbing, story. Allow me to set the scene. Monday night we were just about to sit down to our weekly family dinner – the one where Jess and Patrick join us. I had set the table with a tablecloth and candles in celebration of the upcoming Valentine’s Day and I had made a slightly fancier meal than normal. Dale was helping me put the chicken with mushroom sauce on the serving platter when I heard Jess, who was in the living room say:

Dad. Squirrel.

The two of us ran into the living and sure enough there was a SQUIRREL sitting on the arm of the couch. Dale immediately grabbed the dog (who was sound asleep in front of the wood stove, about 3 feet from the intruder – some watch dog) and instructed Jessica to put him outside. At this point I am in a panic and yelling, “Where’s the cat?!? Where’s the cat?!?”

The squirrel took one look at all of us and jumped down off the couch and turned to run up the stairs. That’s when I heard the cat hiss at this squirrel louder than I have ever heard Mason hiss before. And then he literally knocked the squirrel back down the stairs. The squirrel tore back into the living room, raced up the wall, jumped on the wood stove, raced into the dining room, the bathroom, the office . . . you get the idea.

In the meantime I shut the door between the living room and stairway and went to find the cat. I was quite anxious to make sure that he hadn’t been hurt by the squirrel. And he was absolutely fine. He was pumped, quite frankly! He had defended his turf and he was proud and he was strutting around the upstairs.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the living room door the squirrel continued to race around the house. Patrick was in the kitchen by himself when the squirrel suddenly came running in there. Poor Patrick – he ran through the kitchen, through the dining room, through the living room and up the stairs before he even stopped to look around. The poor little dude was really frightened and I felt so bad. I calmed him down and we went downstairs and I opened the door a crack to see what was going on.

Are you ready? The squirrel was still in the kitchen, perched on top of a curtain rod. Dale was standing in the dining room/kitchen doorway brandishing my grandfather’s Masonic sword at the squirrel. He used the sword to jab at the squirrel and finally got him to run out the kitchen door. My hero.

After a lovely dinner Dale and I went searching to figure out how the squirrel got into the house. Turns out he either fell down or climbed down one of our chimneys (we have 3) and then popped open the chimney plate that was covering an old opening in the chimney from when there was a coal stove or something in the guest room on the second floor. I think the cat must have been right there when the squirrel landed in the house and that’s why the little rodent came running downstairs the way he did. Go Mason!

So, the hole has been blocked and the chimney will be getting a wire covering. Thank Maude we were home when this happened. I shudder to think about what could have happened to Mason and Dixie had we not been there.

Let me just say that I’ve never been frightened by a squirrel. They hang out at the bird feeders and I see them outside and I never give them a passing thought. But when one is in your house? Holy crap is that scary! At least I got a good story for the blog.

Freakin’ squirrels.

This Post Has 83 Comments

  1. Last year my brother and sister-law were ready to leave the following a.m. for 6 months in Fla.A squrrel suddenly appeared and they spent the day chasing it all over the house. When finally caught after hours, they spent the rest of the day cleaning up! Then delayed the trip a day or two until they felt it was squirrel proofed. They also think he came down the chimney.

  2. Um, the dog and cat are predators. The squirrel is prey. I’m pretty sure I know who would have gotten the short end of the stick in that matchup. Although squirrels *can* give unpleasant bites. They can also trash the hell out of your house.

  3. OMG! What a great story. Mason is Baaad Ass!!! We have one that “knocks” on the back door for peanuts, but no way in. I believe you need to make some superhero capes for your heros!

  4. We’re akin! I had a possum sneak up our dryer vent on my birthday morning. Our cat found him. My poor husband woke up at 2 am with me screaming to come get this thing. I couldn’t sleep that night and he knew it, he thought I had a drink or two to celebrate my birthday. LOL.

  5. poor squirrel. he must have been totally freaked out!

    but good for mason. clearly the cat is a much better watch dog than the dog. cats rule! dogs drool!

    and what a great story for patrick to tell at school today.

  6. Thanks for the laugh this morning Carole! I really needed it.

    We get birds in the house sometimes from the woodstove and that is scarey enough. I have to restrain the dog and let them loose and hope they fly out the back door. A squirrel would probably put me over the edge.

    Hey – at least it wasn’t a skunk???

  7. Oh Carole. This is horribly funny but must have been scary at the time. My mother’s uncle once went into his attic which was mostly unused and saw something large at the end. It was a massive squirrel nest. The pest remover said they get calls all the time about squirrels in houses.

  8. Now rent the newer version of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Johnny Depp) and see if squirrels aren’t on the Sh*t-list forever. They freak me out.

    Mason deserves some catnip…like a dumptruck load. Patrick needs chocolate cake and lots of ice cream. ;o)

  9. Yikes! What a squirrel could do inside a house! But hurt the dog or cat? Naaaah. The squirrel was the one in danger from them. And if either/both of them had had the opportunity to go after the squirrel, your house and stuff would have been the big loser. For all of you (squirrel included), I’m glad you were there to prevent those wild scenarios.

  10. Dan’s mom once called us to “come over and help me, please” without explanation. His dad had taken to feeding the squirrels peanuts a few times a day… and they would rush to the porch when the door opened. Well, they ran out of peanuts and Dan’s mom was opening the front door— porch full of squirrels. Back door: landing full of squirrels. if she tried to open the front or back door, the sound would “call” more squirrels. We got to the house and saw Dan’s mom , in the front window, with the phone… and the house… surrounded by squirrels. I couldn’t stop laughing. She was terrified they were going to get in the house.

  11. That’s hilarious. Obviously, it’s not funny when you’re in it, though.

    My mother had been hearing these strange noises in the middle of the night and couldn’t figure out what it was and, of course, my dad couldn’t hear it and pretty much thought she was imagining things.

    So, a few days later, Mom walks by the fireplace and hears *snoring*. Very loud and unmistakeable snoring coming from the damper. She called the exterminator and it turned out a family of raccoons had made our chimney damper their home.

    Ew!

  12. We had a squirrel in house before too. It also got in through the chimney. It was hilarious trying to get him out. I don’t think you have to worry about your pets. They know how to deal with squirrels. Your house on the other hand might have been a wreck if pets and squirrel were left alone for very long. I kept thinking you were going to say the squirrel tipped over the candles and started a fire.

  13. Squirrels are evil. Oh sure, they look cute and fluffy. But it’s all a clever charade. I worked at a girls’ summer camp one summer and our island (we were located on an island) was INFESTED by the cutest little red squirrels. They stole everything (from glasses to cameras to batteries to wallets) and kept breaking into the kitchen (we found squirrel prints on a cake once…eww). Even the larger ones are still evil. In NYC we have gray squirrels and they just jump out of the trashcans at random moments, intent on causing a heart attack in some nice old man who was just trying to throw out his bagel.

    Pure evil.

  14. Rodents of any kind, in the house, just freak.me.out.
    That said–I thought you were going to open the kitchen door and find the squirrel eating the chicken with mushroom sauce. 😉

  15. Oh no! I hope the elegant candlelight dinner eventually resumed. In similar straits, my weapon of choice is a broom. If the intruder is too big, fast, or mean to be thwacked, I call animal control – or the police!

  16. Fantastic story! In our first apartment, a squirrel chewed through the screen to get inside at some nuts I had on a bowl on a coffee table. Trashed the place as we were both at work. Who knew that something so small can wreak so much havoc.

  17. Whew, that is quite a story! I’m guessing the squirrel was even more afraid than you were. My aunt used to have a “pet” squirrel (lived outside in the wild, but somehow she’d tamed him) who would come inside to visit every so often, then return to the outdoors!

  18. Ha. You would have arrived home and Mason would have said, “No thanks, Mom, I don’t need dinner tonight – I ordered in.”

  19. I’m thinking that Mason and Dixie would have been fine – but the squirrel might not have been… We used to have a Siamese who would drag home squirrels and rabbits all the time. I really wish you had a picture of Dale and the sword and the squirrel!

  20. We had squirrels in our loft. My man went into the loft to block the hole, and left the hatch open. I went off to work. When I got back, my dog (lurcher) was sitting guiltily in his bed with a dead grey squirrel the size of his head in the middle of the living room floor. I have no idea what happened as there was no blood, nothing trashed, no scratches, nothing. I think he may have dirty-looked it to death.

  21. That is freaky. A few years ago, I accidentally ran over a squirrel. Well, that day, there was a picture in the Globe of a squirrel eating an acorn. My co-worker enlarged the picture and stuck it on my monitor, along with a caption.

  22. What a wild story! You’ll get great mileage out of that one for years. I don’t have a squirrel story (other than when we used to grease the birdfeeder pole with Crisco and watch the squirrels jump on it and slide down), but I once made the mistake of trying to scare a couple of racoons out of the yard. They charged me and I ran screaming back into the house.

  23. What????? NO pictures???????????????????????? What kind of blogger are you? Good for Mason. We had bats a while back and I too worried about the cats but the were fine.

  24. Ewww. I thought it was bad when we had a lizard in the house! My skin is crawling at Shannon’s comment- and the thought of a squirrel running around. I’m not a big fan of squirrels. 🙂

    I’d love to hear more about the chicken with mushroom sauce. Sounds fabulous!

  25. I’m not usually afraid of bugs or small animals, but a squirrel in the house? That would freak me out! My parents had a similar thing happen only it was a flying squirrel so it just flew past my mother one morning when she was sitting having breakfast.
    Good thing he didn’t want to eat the chicken 😉

  26. What a story!

    I agree with you about squirrels. They’re fine outside & I don’t think about them all that much. But I do NOT want one in my house!

    I had to laugh at the image of Dale & the sword. 🙂

  27. My hairdresser told me a story about raccoons getting into his vacation house–when no one was there. Those things caused an incredible amount of damage, and were difficult to remove. Good thing that the squirrel didn’t stay too long.

  28. Keep a watchful eye. I’ll try to make my long story short. We had a rotting window frame in one of the gable ends one year and a bird decided that right inside the attic was a good place for her nest. They were good tenants, so we let them be. They enlarged the hole, however, so that the following year a squirrel decided to take up residence. Well, everyone knows that squirrels are just party animals, so we evicted him and DH (finally) replaced that rotting board. End of story… or so you’d think.

    Squirrel did not take the eviction well and, apparently, liked our “apartment.” He scratched and clawed and chewed his way through that brand new board to stake his claim. We strong-armed him out — hubby with something (a broom? a shovel?) in the attic trying to shoo him out while I pounded on the sleeping porch ceiling from below — we didn’t want him getting comfortable, you know? We finally got him out and DH put up a piece of sheet metal over the window frame area to keep the squirrel out!

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