mathyou (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} mathyou) wrote,@ 2006-07-10 21:13:00 |
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When the Squirrels Come Marching In
Over the weekend of the 4th - actually, the weekend just before the 4th - I drove back home to Des Moines, which meant my apartment was vacant for a good three days. When you leave your home for an extended period of time, I think there's always the fear that things will be in tact when you arrive back home, which means that the overt fear is that someone will have entered your space and rearranged (and possibly removed) certain items.
So imagine how freaked out I was when, after three days away, I walked in to my studio apartment and show a shaft of light piercing the plastic divider on the side of my air conditioner. It wasn't someone who invaded my space; it was a something.
I've noticed the outlines of gyrating squirrels in the little cove where my window-unit air conditioner sits. I think the sound of the unit's hum scares them away, and since I'm really just a walking nuclear core, when I'm home the air is on all the time. But that hum died down for 72 straight hours, and I guess the squirrels conspired. They tried to chew through the slat on the left side, and then decided it was futile, and began to chew through the actual wood frame of the window on the other side. they got through far enough that one of them evidently shoved its little rabies paw through and slid the divider open. EW!
Let me tell you, the only thing creepier than a human breaking in to your apartment is an unpredictable rodent breaking in. What was even creepier was that, a.) there was a horrible, decay-like smell coming from my kitchen, and b.) absolutely nothing appeared to have been touched or moved or soiled or stolen. The smell was evidently coming from a pan of water I had cooked pasta in and left on my stove before I left. But i've never smelled anything like that, and was convinced that it was actually squirrel shit, or, at the worst, a dead squirrel. So I was stalking my apartment looking for either a live or a dead squirrel, and I didn't know which I wanted to find less.
Since I didn't have anything to block the windows with, I had to spend that night in fear that I would be awakened in the middle of the night by a faint scratching sound, look up, and see a furry paw coming through the chewed-up hole in the divider. Luckily, the squirrels must've either realized I have nothing of interest to them (as intriguing as DVDs of all three seasons of Peep Show must've seemed to them at first...), or they could smell my neck-snapping rage from across the alley way. The next afternoon I bought two cement blocks that now rest in my window on either side of the air conditioner. Yeah, it looks ugly, but not half as ugly as a boot-stomped squirrel smear in the middle of my living room rug.
Over the weekend of the 4th - actually, the weekend just before the 4th - I drove back home to Des Moines, which meant my apartment was vacant for a good three days. When you leave your home for an extended period of time, I think there's always the fear that things will be in tact when you arrive back home, which means that the overt fear is that someone will have entered your space and rearranged (and possibly removed) certain items.
So imagine how freaked out I was when, after three days away, I walked in to my studio apartment and show a shaft of light piercing the plastic divider on the side of my air conditioner. It wasn't someone who invaded my space; it was a something.
I've noticed the outlines of gyrating squirrels in the little cove where my window-unit air conditioner sits. I think the sound of the unit's hum scares them away, and since I'm really just a walking nuclear core, when I'm home the air is on all the time. But that hum died down for 72 straight hours, and I guess the squirrels conspired. They tried to chew through the slat on the left side, and then decided it was futile, and began to chew through the actual wood frame of the window on the other side. they got through far enough that one of them evidently shoved its little rabies paw through and slid the divider open. EW!
Let me tell you, the only thing creepier than a human breaking in to your apartment is an unpredictable rodent breaking in. What was even creepier was that, a.) there was a horrible, decay-like smell coming from my kitchen, and b.) absolutely nothing appeared to have been touched or moved or soiled or stolen. The smell was evidently coming from a pan of water I had cooked pasta in and left on my stove before I left. But i've never smelled anything like that, and was convinced that it was actually squirrel shit, or, at the worst, a dead squirrel. So I was stalking my apartment looking for either a live or a dead squirrel, and I didn't know which I wanted to find less.
Since I didn't have anything to block the windows with, I had to spend that night in fear that I would be awakened in the middle of the night by a faint scratching sound, look up, and see a furry paw coming through the chewed-up hole in the divider. Luckily, the squirrels must've either realized I have nothing of interest to them (as intriguing as DVDs of all three seasons of Peep Show must've seemed to them at first...), or they could smell my neck-snapping rage from across the alley way. The next afternoon I bought two cement blocks that now rest in my window on either side of the air conditioner. Yeah, it looks ugly, but not half as ugly as a boot-stomped squirrel smear in the middle of my living room rug.
