A Dray of Walters

You may remember Walter (here and here), the brilliant squirrel who lived in the attic and eluded capture for weeks. But after great gnashing of teeth, we caught him and dropped him off in the wilds of Georgia. In fact whenever we pass the huge oak tree where Cal dropped Walter off, we shout, “Hey, Walter!” That should be the end of the story. But it’s not.

The other day Cal and I heard a party going on in the attic. Not just a squirrel running along the rafters. We heard a squirrel rave going on. I’m pretty sure they even had a mosh pit. Cal sighed heavily and went up to take a look. After he pulled himself into the attic (remember we have no ladder, it’s just an angled passageway that looks exactly like a laundry chute), Cal discovered a dray of squirrels. (Yes, I looked “dray” up.) They were partying. Cal yelled at them. They scampered, mocking him with their squeaks. He drove them from the attic. They jumped from the attic vent onto the garden window and to the ground. I was in the kitchen at the time, not realizing what was going on, and it seemed like it was raining squirrels.

Of course, chasing out squirrels in an attic with no subflooring of any kind carries some risk—those two by fours are only two inches wide. Cal fell. Thankfully, he only got a face-full of cellulose insulation. One of my nightmares is that Cal falls through the ceiling and takes the ten foot plunge to the floor. That didn’t happen, but we do have a convex handprint in my office now.

Cal finally solved the problem by covering the attic vents with plywood screwed into the frame of the vents. (We have peak vents now, so the old ones aren’t necessary). Cal discovered that Walter’s buddies had cleverly chewed the vent edges in ways that weren’t visible unless you knew where they were.

Problem solved. Except not. There’s another squirrel in the attic. We don’t know if he’s stuck in there or if there’s another entrance. So Cal will put the trap up there today. Hopefully we’ll catch Walter’s friend and then drop him off at the old oak tree. Of course, if that doesn’t work and there’s another entrance, we could cede the attic to the squirrels and make an Allstate commercial.