My wife and I bought a house and moved across the country late in 2022. I’d love to say it’s the reason for going almost three years between posts and then revamping the whole site, but I’d be lying. In truth, managing even this very tiny corner of the internet became too much of a chore for me before, so I just stopped doing it. You can stop doing chores as an adult and your parents won’t care. Your wife might if the chore is really a chore, but in the case of a frivolous thing like this no one will bat an eye.

Anyway, I’m back. Maybe. Sort of. Who knows. Work is busy. Life is busy, and in about two months will get a whole lot busier.

Back to the house. It’s a great house. Older than me, and I’m getting too old for this. Older than my first car, and that thing was so old you had to turn the wheel almost a full revolution before it would move an inch to the side. Older than my parents, and I’ll just stop this sentence here before anyone comes to blows.

We bought this house because it was a recent renovation that didn’t seem flipped, in the sense that the previous owner bought it in the Early Aughts–the 2000s Early Aughts, not the 1900s Early Aughts, although it existed then too–and didn’t sell it until 2022 after using the garage as a shop for years and never occupying the house itself. He was a general contractor and did pretty good work renovating it himself over the years. Everything but the foundation was from post 2018, and that’s pretty good when the foundation is older than dirt.

We also bought this house because the basement was tall enough that I could stand up straight, which is uncommon in the area and in houses built when people were on average a few inches shorter. Of course I have a scar on my head because last summer the basement flooded through a crack in the foundation (and sewage backup, but that’s a different story) and when I went to check on it I knocked my bald head on an airduct that hangs a few inches below the ceiling. You bleed a lot easier when your hair isn’t there protecting you, I’ve come to learn. It’s what I get for making fun of my dad that one time where in an old picture he was wearing the same cutoff jorts but had the kind of hair that back in the 60s you’d have to put in a wig in order to get a job.

I realize I’m really leading you on here. You want to know about squirrels, but you see sometimes a man wants to give a short update on his life when going so long between posts.

But fine, you can have your squirrel story. It’s not even that great, I just wanted to lure you in with the title. The house is old, but mostly new. It’s really a Ship of Theseus scenario. The damn thing has been replaced piece by piece over the years and in name it’s still the same house, but there probably like 90% new materials.

I’m guessing one of the older materials is where the roof overhang meets the wall near the upstairs bathroom. Houses in this area were built when families had eight children but somehow fit them into two rooms and a kitchen. This house was renovated to add a second floor–or maybe it always existed but was very small–and the attic was converted to closet space. I’ve searched every inch of the upstairs and can’t find a single way into the crawlspace.

Of course, the squirrels found a way into the crawlspace. Probably through some old join that’s been there for over a hundred years.

Earlier in the year our neighbor alerted us to the squirrels living alongside us. At that point we’d only heard movement on the roof, and since squirrels are light and fast that movement would scurry along the shingles in the early morning hours and wake up the cats but was otherwise harmless. We had a pest control company come out to install a one-way door over the hole in the roof. They said they’d be back in a couple weeks once the squirrels left.

A couple weeks go by, the squirrel activity is getting worse. I’m starting to think this squirrel door isn’t working, we’ve got a two-way door in place and a doorman squirrel welcoming in his friends. That turned out to be only partially true–there very-well may have been a doorman squirrel but the company put the door in the wrong spot, so it became nothing more than a tourist attraction the squirrel army pondered as it marched into our roof.

A couple days ago the pest company comes back to put the door in the right place. All hell breaks loose.

We woke up yesterday to scratching in the walls behind the bed, which is kitty-corner to where the door is. For hours the squirrels ran around our bedroom. Could have been two, could have been a dozen. Scratching on the outsides of airducts. Climbing up the insides of the walls. The cats are freaking out. The people are freaking out. If I didn’t know what it was, I’d have been living in a horror movie. Maybe we still are, but in the lull before the climax. We haven’t heard them since yesterday afternoon, when I started banging on the walls to chase them back to the one-way door and my wife started playing her music as loud as she could to let them know the room was occupied.

Anyway, that’s the small life update. I’ll report back here with more updates. Or maybe I won’t.