The Squirrel Incident

After a long day of running errands and working on the house, I was really looking forward to sitting down and watching a movie with Scott.  As I'm walking to join him the living room, we both hear a loud thump.  I look into the office, which is off the living room to see if the wind knocked something over.  Seeing nothing, I head back into the living room.  Just then our fireplace doors start rattling and I'm greeted with this....

A visitor decided to come down our chimney and it sure as heck wasn't Santa.  This squirrel was going crazy too -  charging the doors, knocking down soot and making a mess of everything.  And of course this would happen now, because I literally just cleaned up our unused fireplace and replaced our old, dirty orange candles with  brand new, sparkling clean, white ones only two days earlier.  So, while the squirrel is wreaking havoc in our fireplace and making me jump out of my skin every time the doors rattle, we are racking our brains wondering how the heck we are going to get this creature out!   

We thought about using a basket or a bag to capture him, but the way the doors open there would have been too many escape holes.  Then we made a "net" with a blanket, folding it in half, tying off the two ends and holding the opening over the doors.  Scott opened the door through the blanket and we waited, but of course the squirrel wanted nothing to do with just crawling into the blanket.  So, we moved on to Plan B (which was actually Scott's Plan A, but I was too scared to let him implement it until we first exhausted all of our other options).  

Plan B:  Open the front door, let out the squirrel, and pray it runs for the door!

Now, there are three openings off the living room, the front door, the hallway leading to the bedrooms and the kitchen.  We propped open the front door, barricaded the kitchen opening and armed ourselves with brooms.  The plan was for Scott to open the fireplace doors and then chase the squirrel out with his broom.  I was to stand guard in the hallway (behind the safety of a laundry basket, mind you) in case our little intruder got off track.  

So we got in position, Scott opened the doors, and guess what......Nothing happened.  We waited for awhile, but the squirrel was not coming out.  Finally Scott took his broom and tried to "sweep" it out.  Lord. Have. Mercy. I had no idea squirrels made such evil noises.  That thing started hissing and screeching like nothing I've ever heard.  But it still didn't come out.  We started working on Plan C (which may or may not have involved some type of blunt object), when Scott decided to give him another "sweep."  Well, this time the sucker bolted and not for the front door either.  Nope he came charging. Right at me.  

The next part is still a little blurry, but I do know that it involved me screaming for dear life, while the squirrel was catapulting his little body over the laundry basket, only to come in direct contact with the full force of my broom!  Thankfully, this slight redirection on my part, convinced him to head the opposite way and right out the front door with Scott hot on his heels.  The next thing I know, Scott is congratulating me saying, "Babe, you hit it! What a great shot!" and I'm trying not to have a heart attack or worse yet, go into labor! 

So, that folks was our squirrel incident. Hope your Saturday night was a little more relaxing than ours!  By the way, have I mentioned how much I HATE squirrels? I really see no reason for squirrels or seagulls to live on this beautiful earth and wouldn't be sad if they all disappeared!