I’m an animal lover and a softie, and I hate to thwart critters from living a normal life. However, I do have my limits. When they repeatedly chew electric wires and go after my house and my solar panels despite my efforts to keep them away… well, it’s game on, you little fockers.
As I mentioned last time, the solar panel guys found yet more squirrel damage last week, even after an expensive tree trimming behind the house, laborious tree-trimming in front of the house (by me), an expensive installation of “critter guards” around our solar panels, and serious efforts on the part of a pest-control expert to get the little pests off the premises.
I thought I had pruned the tree out front sufficiently to eliminate the threat. I basically made it a bas-relief of a spruce tree. That was basically wishful thinking. I don’t think anyone was living in the tree last winter, because our Christmas lights survived the season unchewed. But now I come to find a big summer home nestled in a tangle of branches near the top, on the side facing away from us where I couldn’t see it. I had not observed the rascal itself, but Lexi and Connor downstairs had. And apparently it could get up onto the roof from there.
Yesterday I got out my vorpal sword, the extensible tree-trimmer, and strove mightily against the Fortress of the Squirrel. In the end, its great house fell. And our tree is now a couple of feet shorter, and I hope no longer within leaping range of easy roof access. I still need to do some restorative sculpting.
Did I feel like a heel? I surely did. If this had been a talking-animals animated feature, I definitely would have been the evil developer felling the homes of the lovable critters.
Thankfully, this was not such a movie.
Squirrels 1, Humans 1.
Will the series be renewed? Too soon to tell.
Leave a Reply