I have squirrels in my attic...

[nekosensei]

By saying that I have squirrels in my attic, I don't mean that I am nuts or anything. I literally have squirrels in my attic. On Monday or Tuesday morning, I was lying in bed and I heard a gnawing sound that reminded me of the time my parents had a mouse. At the time, we had a dog that loved killing mice in our garage, but she had gotten old, blind, and possibly a bit senile. Mr. Mouse decided to take advantage of that and snack on her dog food, which we stored in our living room closet.

Back to my original story. I wandered around my bedroom and opened closets and drawers to make sure that there wasn't a mouse hiding somewhere. A closet door made too much noise as I was shutting it, and the critter must have heard it because it stopped gnawing. Over the past couple of days, I heard occasional gnawing and scampering coming from the ceiling.

When I told doomsey about it, he talked to his parents, and his dad said that I was probably hearing a squirrel on the roof. Okay. Fine. The next time I heard it, I pointed it out to doomsey, and he seemed to think that a) it was just the wind or b) something banging together because of the wind.

Then we have this morning. I woke up early because I heard a lot of gnawing and frolicking. doomsey tried to assure me that it was the wind and that it was probably a tree branch hitting the roof. Then I said, "if it's a tree branch hitting the roof, then why do I only hear it during the morning?" I was confused because I never heard it during the afternoon or at night. At that point, doomsey opened up the window and noticed that there wasn't much wind. Then, he went outside and looked at the roof. He said that he could have sworn that he saw an overturned roof tile, and he's going to go up on a ladder later today to take a closer look. Also, we didn't see any squirrels scampering on the roof, so that means that they're probably in the attic. Before going back to bed, doomsey tried pounding on the ceiling of our bedroom to see what would happen. The noise stopped for a few minutes and then gradually resumed. Yep. Definitely a critter. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be a squirrel because it's only active in the morning and I've seen squirrels shimmy up the porch and climb onto our roof earlier this spring.

This morning, doomsey and I joked around about sticking a cat up there to see what would happen. And of course, I had to make a crack about putting some of my rat poison Warfarin tablets up there too. This morning, I called Terminix because we have a contract with them. They're going to come out and inspect on Tuesday morning. I'm hoping that they'll trap whatever is up there and release it. And I don't want to try trapping it myself because I'm afraid that there will be a nest up there, that the babies will die without their mother, and come July, that the upper floors of my house will start to smell something fierce.