Intruder

This weekend, we awoke to the clickity clack of claws on the ceiling. Turns out, a squirrel chewed through the attic fan mesh and set up shop above our heads.

A squirrel trapped in an attic is not happy. Aside from leaving poop pellets all over, it managed to shred a whole bunch of insulation, pee on storage boxes, and nearly chew into a wire.

Thanks to Home Depot, we armed ourselves with a Havahart 1030 and peanut butter on chunks of bread. This afternoon, the little guy finally fell for it.

A squirrel trapped in an attic for two days and then caught in a steel cage is extremely unhappy. I have never heard anything so pissed off before. Apparently squirrels have a panic call that sounds like an angry clown who just swallowed a bunch of helium and is half screaming, half chittering maniacally.

So throwing a towel over the cage calms the squirrel down, though I'm not sure why. Maybe the darkness reminds it of a nest? At any rate, final score: Squirrel - 0 ; Homeowners - 1

We nailed a bunch of galvanized hardware cloth over the attic fan. I hope we never have to do this again!