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. 

Good News

Two blog posts in one day?! That means I have some good news to share. This morning, we caught Walter! (If you've missed the Walter sage, click here and here.) He is even now being released into the wild to carry on his squirrely life.

It's kind of sad now that he's gone--hygienic, but sad. No longer will I hear the patter of his feet in the attic. Unless, of course, Wanda lives there too. I guess we'll find out.

Here are some photos of Walter. Note the intelligent eyes and beautifully bushy tail. Have a good life, Walter!

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.

Squirrel in the Attic

We have a new pet. Okay, not really a “pet” per se. Pets are cute, cuddly, and you actually want them. This creature, who I’ll call Walter (after the uber-bizarre character on Fringe, which I sometimes watch because I love my son though I despise the show.) lives in the attic.

Walter is a squirrel. We know Walter lives up there because we’ve seen his beady eye balls glowing red in the flashlight beams. We would LOVE to get rid of Walter because he’s a danger to our house. Imagine chewing through electrical wire—my hope is the power would short before the cellulose insulation caught fire.

The big problem is we can’t figure out how Walter gets into the attic. We’ve walked the outside of the house looking for gaps. Nothing. The attic vents are secure. (When Cal was in grad school, he worked for a pest control company doing this sort of thing. But Walter is good and sneaky.) So Walter still lives in the attic and presumably gets out to gather food.

One day, we decided to track Walter in the attic. That idea had one great flaw—Walter is nimble as a squirrel and we are not. Other flaws: Our attic is huge so even finding Walter is a chore. Our attic has no lighting so you have to hold a flashlight in your mouth as you grab beams. Our attic has no flooring so would-be squirrel trackers must hop from rafter to rafter, hoping to avoid falling through the ceiling and hitting the wooden flooring after a 12 foot drop. Let’s just say that my college ballet instructor would be pleased at my leaps, balance and pirouettes. And before you get the false impression that I was actually a good squirrel tracker, let me explain that I ended up sitting on a beam while Calvin “danced” around the attic, chasing Walter.

In spite of Cal’s dancing prowess, Walter outsmarted us. And we’ve given up, at least for now. When Cal and I lay in bed at night, we listen to Walter jump around the attic—squirrel partytime. And I feel proud of Walter, which is kind of pathetic. But then I have an odd sense of humor and think that Allstate’s raccoon commercial is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time, especially because it reminds me of Walter.


Here's the raccoon commercial. Enjoy.