If any of you have a super- duper, hair-trigger, live catch, squirrel trap that I could borrow, let me know. In the meantime, I remembered that I shared a squirrel story here once before. I found it. It’s from 12 years ago. You’ll notice a thing or two that dates it back in time a bit. I felt like sharing it again.

Life Can Be Squirrelly

Life has been kind of squirrelly around our place the past week or two. And when I say squirrelly, I mean that literally. We’ve had a squirrel who decided to take up residence at our house.

At first, when I heard the scratchy, skittery noises in the garage, I thought that we had mice. It is, after all, that time of year. The robins and geese fly south and the mice and spiders want to come inside and share quarters with us. (I guess if they had wings, they’d go South with their feathered friends. But as it is, we get to deal with them.)

After I heard these “mouse noises” in the garage two or three times, I was thinking to myself, “That sounds like a BIG mouse.” I immediately remembered cartoons of Sylvester the Cat doing battle with a kangaroo which he unfortunately mistook for a giant mouse. That was when I first thought that perhaps I wasn’t dealing with a mouse.

Logic told me that the odds of a kangaroo being in the garage were small. But – not impossible. The likelier suspect in my mind was a bird or – maybe – a raccoon. The noises I was hearing were coming from a large heater vent conduit space. It hadn’t been too long since my dog Sassy (RIP) had “treed” a couple of ‘coons up a utility pole in the backyard.

The mystery was solved when I walked into the garage and came face to face with Petey. A co-worker of mine calls every squirrel she sees “Petey” – so therefore, my garage dwelling squirrel instantly got that name.

I had mixed emotions upon seeing Petey. On the one hand I was glad that he was a squirrel and not a kangaroo. On the other hand, if I had come face to face with a mouse; I would have been better equipped to “wage war.”

Petey, after sizing me up, ran away into the chaos of stuff and nooks and crannies that make up my garage. Believe me, there are a zillion places for a squirrel to hide in that place.

I considered my options. I asked myself, “What would Jesus do? What would President Bush do?” “What would John McCain do?” And lastly, What would Barack Obama do?” I soon decided that this method of making a decision was way too complicated. I would just have to do what I, myself, would do.

I simply opened all three doors to the garage and left. Poor Petey had been stuck inside my garage and would surely want to get out and be in his natural habitat. Any smart, self-respecting squirrel would have the sense to go find a tree to spend the winter in – right?

Let me be kind to you and not make this story any longer than it needs to be. I’ll just skip right to the part where Petey started living inside my house. That’s right – somehow, sometime, Petey went from the garage through the door into the kitchen.

Now I’ll skip to the part where Petey was chirping defensively at Gypsy, our cat. This is where Petey was behind a night stand in a guest bedroom. I closed all the doors to other rooms and opened all the outside doors to the house. I armed myself with a broom. My wife and neighbor huddled in fear outside the house.

I sequestered the cat and then threatened Petey with the broom. He scampered out of the room so fast that I couldn’t get to the hallway quick enough to see if he had run out of the house. I crossed my fingers and hoped.

Hope vanished a day later when I saw Petey at the cat food dish in the kitchen. We were done monkeying around. We called the city for a live catch trap. Of course, no trap was immediately available.

We decided an all-out search and evict mission was in order. This is the part of the story where we opened all the outside doors of the house and systematically rearranged furniture, opened up all three hide-a-beds, and reminded ourselves of how long it had been since we had really cleaned those easy to neglect corners. No Petey. No where.

The next day the city animal control guy brought the trap. It was set with some pumpkin seeds as bait. Time passed – no Petey. The next day my son in law visited and wanted to see the trap. As we stood by the trap, Ty pointed to the window and asked, “Is that Petey?” There was Petey – on the outside looking in. He must have gone outside through one of the open doors while we were rummaging and rampaging through the house.

That’s the end of the story – for now. The trap is still set in my house on the off chance that Petey is a twin. I’m thinking that my next move is to set the trap outside and do a “catch and release” job on Petey. I just need to decide whose open-door garage I’ll be nearby when I release him.