No Rooms for Rent

OK seriously. This 2100 sq foot old house is a good amount of space for the children, the dog, and myself. It's a little tight with my ever growing antique collection. But there is absolutely no more room for tenants.

Tenants, you ask? Why yes, the very loud, very destructive, bushy tailed, once-cute but now believed to be quite evil, SQUIRRELS. Those suckers have moved into my attic. And they were NOT invited, I assure you.

Yes, yes, ...those of you who know me know that I am welcoming to a fault. The coffee's always brewing, the welcome mat is out and my arms are outstretched to everyone who visits my home. Mi casa es su casa. Yada, yada. HOWEVER....I did NOT post a welcome sign near the eaves under my roof, where those little suckers have gnawed themselves entrance holes into my house!

It all started over the summer, after I acquired the house and was having electrical work done by my friend, Robb. I was somewhere in the house painting or cleaning or something, and my daughter came running and told me to come upstairs. It had already begun to get dark and we had no lights, so I followed her and her flashlight. When we reached the top of the stairs, her light pointed at a rodent on the landing floor which shocked me! I thought Robb had just found a dead squirrel in the attic when he was working, but no, he KILLED it. With a piece of wood. Thrown Indiana Jones-style like a frisbee at the squirrel across the attic on the wall, and he got him! Not only that, but Robb planned to take him home to dinner. HIS dinner. With a side of beans and grits, most likely. UGH.

Since then, our house has sounded haunted. Middle of the day, middle of the night....footsteps, scurrying, gnawing, thrashing, thumping. It's ridiculous. One made its way recently from the attic, down the back side of the wall, to the first floor near my dulcimer. It wakes up (or returns from the outside) sometime between 9am and 11 am every day. I hear it, and I take my big ole' kraut masher and pound the wall and the ceiling to scare it, and I hear it run back up the wall and it gets quiet. I walk away, and it comes back. I have visions of that sucker ending up in my basement, inviting all of its friends, and turning it into a man/squirrel cave, complete with beer cans and billiards.

I finally texted Robb the other day and said, "Hey, these squirrels are driving us NUTS! When are you gonna come back and get your DINNER?" He texted back, "LOL." I wrote, "Even Jillian couldn't sleep last night because of the noise they make." He replied, "Maybe she was hungry!" Haha very funny.

He did come by this morning with a pellet gun. Made his way upstairs, removed the dropped ceiling tiles, the attic access door and climbed up quietly. Guess who WASN'T there? The dang squirrel. So instead of shootin' dinner, Robb walked around out on the roof and filled all the holes with expanding foam.

He left.

Thirty minutes later, as I sat here at my MacBook gazing at primitives on Pinterest, (don't ask if you don't know, it's just one more magical internet site to suck all your free time up)....my tenant scurried down the wall behind my dulcimer and returned to destroying God-knows-what. Unbelievable!!! That sucker either ate through the foam, or he's covered in it from getting through it.

If this keeps up, I'll have to change the name of my business from Crowfield Primitives to Squirrels in the Attic Antiques.

Oh, and if you do visit, please don't share your coffee with the squirrels....