Walter Update

Today my chances of coming up with a creative post on something new and delightful are almost nil because I have post-migraine brain. Late Saturday night (i.e., early Sunday morning) a sort of neighbor called. She was upset about something. She didn’t want comfort or encouragement. She wanted to whine. Now if she were a friend, I’d have listened semi-patiently to her whine (even though it was the middle of the night). But I barely know this woman. If that wasn’t bad enough, she called back a second time to whine. It was the second call that gave me the prickle in my brain, which said, “Migraine.”

Anyway all that to say that today is a Walter update. (Click here if you don’t know/remember who Walter is.)  In the last Walter post, Cal had gotten a humane trap to put up in the attic for Walter. Ariel was very concerned because the trap had been in the attic for several days and she was worried that Walter was starving to death in the trap. Cal reminded her that we could still hear Walter playing in the attic so he wasn’t “caught.” But he went to check.

Getting into our attic is an athletic acheievment. There is no pull down ladder. Instead a wall in the pantry has a small “door in the wall.” You open the door, hoist yourself into opening, which doesn’t have a flat bottom but slopes toward the ceiling. Then you grab the ceiling rafters and pull yourself up. (This becomes important later on.)

So Cal went to check the trap. When we’d tried the humand trap the first time, we discovered that Walter had bumped the trap enough that the bait dish moved and he could pick it clean from outside the trap. This time, Cal wedged the trap so that Walter couldn’t bump it. (Yes, Walter has a very high IQ. We grow smart squirrels in Tennesssee.) Since Walter couldn’t bump the trap, he ignored it. The trap bait was untouched. So Cal moved the trap closer to Walter’s nest. Maybe the smell would overwhelm his squirrely wisdom.

When Cal was finished, he decided to leave the attic. Except there was a problem. Even though Cal told me that he was going into the attic, I forgot. In the meanwhile, I saw the open “door in the wall,” decided that one of the kids must have left it open (shame on them), and I shut it. And locked it. Fifteen minutes later, Cal was stuck in the netherworld of the attic chute. Eventually, I heard him kicking the door—he couldn’t reach it with his hands. He was very nice about it. He even smiled. But the smile was one of you-see-I’m-right-about-you and added weight to his You-clean-up-before-I-even-start complaint—I’ve been known to put his tools away before he starts a project. I’m very blessed in my choice of spouse. He even talked to crazed, whiney woman the second time she called. He was very nice, but I don’t think she’ll be calling to whine during the middle of the night any time soon.