Just like a teenager!

It's Friday! I think this means it's time to have a little fun.

I want to tell you a story about some squirrels that moved into our home some time ago. They were uninvited!

When I first moved out to this house 7 years ago, I was so careful about using live traps and I tried to think about how the animals and my family could live in harmony in the woods. It didn’t take too long before I started calling anything that invaded my space, “home wreckers” and if you were a “home wrecker” this means, war and I was taking you out dead or alive! I have never owned a gun or shot a gun in my life but last week I asked a friend of mine to loan me one. Remember in the cartoons when the crazy country person starts shooting up their house, if I had a gun I swear I would have been trying to shoot those squirrels through the ceiling and rafters.

My husband and I tried everything we could think of live traps, poisoning, trapping them inside, nothing was working and they were distroying our home. Our home I say....It was time for the professionals!

I called Barry from SW Michigan Pest Control. He came right out and got to work and set two live traps. Nothing! The next day he set a kill trap at the base of the tree and cut two holes for the squirrels to come in and out of with kill traps covering the holes. The bait was taken and one of the traps triggered but NO SQUIRREL. All the while, I can hear them running around back and forth, playing, rolling nuts, laughing and laughing...Ha, Ha, Ha! (This is really when the gun would have been a bad idea.) Barry came out the next day and said he had been thinking about this all night. I could tell because he was beginning to look a little disheveled. He was starting to look a little traumatized but I decided that he wasn't in need of a crisis intervention yet. He made a board to cover the holes with kill traps, covered any other place they could get out and put more bait in the traps. I could hear them again in the evening and SNAP! I run outside to see the kill trap has been triggered again! NO SQUIRREL. Really, I have no way of understanding how these squirrels could do this without getting caught. Barry is about fit to be tied and says, “You can fire me if you want, I have never been unable to catch an animal and you don't have to pay me.” (I think he wanted me to put him out of his misery and rid him of this hell job, but I didn't.) He noticed that somehow they have even gotten the bait out of the live traps, too! Ha! Ha! He had been at our home 3 times daily for 3 days in a roll. Barry noticed that they are making holes other places to get out and destroying our home even more, Home Wreckers!

So he decided to take the trap off the opening and set up other traps in the area. I noticed not soon after Barry left there was a lot of activity going on and I think I saw one carrying another squirrel…I haven’t heard much this morning and I am so hoping that they decided to move out yesterday!

You ask, "What does this have to do with a teenager?" I found myself chuckling to myself at how insane this chase had become with these squirrels. The more we tried to out smart, and control them it seemed the more oppositional and distructive the squirrels became. We were definitely putting pressure on them like you would do with a teen that you wanted to straighten up and fly right. Barry kept saying to have patience and they will come around, "We will get them." When provided a safe opening for the squirrels to leave after much pressure they decided to leave and make the choice that was going to most healthy for them. Sometimes as parents we need to let go a little to allow the teen enough space to make a good decision on their own.