the squirrel cycle

okay. so.

first off - i'm totally fine. one stitch, bizarrely they gave me crutches, and antibiotics, so it's all good.

where to start?

AT THE BEGINNING, i suppose.

as you all well know by know, i had been hearing scritch-scratching in the walls for quite some time. at the beginning, it was merely an annoyance; i sleep with earplugs and so rarely heard the creatures, and i figured it was fine as they were living happily in the walls, and not trying to bust out of them. of course, as time went on, i did become progressively more worried as the scratching grew more intense and more frequent. of course, pure terror came home when i noticed that whatever it was had actually scratched a large hole in my ceiling; more terror came when i saw they'd done a hole in the bathroom as well. but management was called, they seemed to have patched up whatever entrance the squirrels were coming in, and we hoped all was well.

it was not.

the night after the entrance had supposedly been patched, i heard more scratching in the walls. christ, i thought to myself. okay, well, first chance i get, i gotta call management and tell them there's still ratsquirrels stuck in the flophouse. of course, being busy, and kind of a lazy ass, i never called, and we just sort of...assumed..as we do, that things would work out.

they did not.

yesterday or the day before, i heard the squirrels pinging in the air ducts. oh, lord, i thought. but again, fatefully, we did nothing. EVEN WHEN KRISTON TOLD ME HE HAD NO DUCT COVERING IN HIS ROOM. i assume our thought process went like this: we live in the flophouse, the charmed residence of bounty! nothing truly bad could happen here! no squirrels could come to TERRORIZE THE HOUSE AND CAUSE ME TO LOSE A PIECE OF LEG FLESH.

so, tuesday evening, i was strolling home from work and the grocery store. i came in, yelled hello to the roomies, petted the dogs hello, and went straight up to my room to drop off my stuff. my door i had left cracked open that morning, even though i usually close it; my thought process had been that, if today is the day the squirrel bursts through my roof, i would like it to be able to get out.

ha. ha. ha.

i opened the door, cautiously, as i do these days, because honestly, i semi-believed that every day was the day i would find the squirrel had burst through the cd case and died all over my room. i looked immediately, as i always do, to the cd case, and saw it was still intact. phew! thought i. i opened the door wider, started to enter my room, and SAW A HUGE SQUIRREL HANGING TO MY CURTAINS.

okay, i will be the first to admit: i flipped the fuck out. it was insane. i screamed bloody murder, dropped everything, slammed the door, continued screaming bloody murder, and raced down the stairs, screaming even more bloody murder. (what i do find humor in is the fact that as soon as they heard my scream from downstairs, one of my roomies reportedly said, "that must be the squirrel.").

this is where the shit went down. i raced down the front staircase screaming something akin to "OH MY GOD THE SQUIRREL IS HERE AHHHH AHHHH AHHH SQUIRREL AHHHHHH IT'S IN MY ROOM!!!" of course, all my roomies raced to me and we met at the bottom of the stairs, where we all proceeded to kind of freak out while we tried to suss out was going on. the commotion was something terrible, and when i looked down at one point and found wreck latched onto my leg, i have to say i didn't even know what was going on.

so, yeah. he was biting the hell out of me, and it was 5-10 seconds before any of us actually knew what was going on and we were able to wrench him off of me. let me just say, i hold zero ill will towards wreck. he is a gentle dog and has never done anything remotely like this before, and he was justifiably freaked out by all the screaming and squirrel mania. but, i had a puncture thing in my leg, was bleeding a bit, and had what appeared to be a bit of flesh hanging out of the back of my calf. it was kind of gross.

so, i focused on attending to my leg, while spencer and kriston mounted up and devised a battle plan. a plan, it seems, apparently consisted of them taking brooms, blocking off various entrances, and hoping they could chase the squirrel down the hall and out the front door.

from downstairs, matt and i kind of hung out, listening, and kind of freaking out. honestly, at that point, i was just ridiculously loopy and in some odd hysterical state. i had found a squirrel, i was bleeding, my roommates were maybe dying by squirrel bites; it was just crazy. i found myself just laughing hysterically for stretches on end, because, SERIOUSLY? this is HAPPENING? only at the flophouse.

from our perches downstairs, matt and i could only hear screams and scuffles and crashes and curses. at one point kriston started yelling like a bat out of hell, and matt said, "i think that means the squirrel won."

but, success! after 10 minutes or so, kriston wrangled it such that the squirrel landed in a bag i had lying around, which he pinched up and dispersed into the night. teh hero!

aaaand everything that will happen in my life after the great squirrel excavation of '07 will be extremely anti-climatic. it was determined that i should probably go to the ER - not because i really thought it was a super bad bite, but it did look like it could need stitches, and the thought of infection was enough to make me agree i should go. which was a five hour process, involving two ERs, and lots of me saying, "well, a dog bit me, my roommate's dog, but it wasn't his fault, there was this squirrel..." also, a frantic phone call from my mother, saying, "your sister just called from UVa, she said something about your blog and a squirrel...?" kriston was my valiant companion the entire evening, and for dinner, he even bought me a potbelly "wreck" sandwich - as he said, it was only fair that i should get my chance to take a bite out of wreck.

best we can figure, the squirrel, terrified and trapped in the walls and ceilings, found its way into the vents. during the day, it must have escaped through kriston's room; in fact, it must have gone all over the house, as the boys did notice a few dishes in the kitchen had been broken, but figured it was a dog, or, er, some wind...or something. whatever. for whatever reason, the squirrel ended back in my room through the crack in the door i had so stupidly left open, and as it was clinging to a window, it was probably trying desperately to get out. so i hold the little motherfucker no ill will. sort of.

and that, we hope is the end of the flophouse squirrel cycle. season one.

UPDATE: becks and tommy helped bring my stupid, and not really all-that-entertaining, but i'm still posting it, voicemail about the squirrels, to the world. 

Comments

[Becks]

Oh my god. I was dying laughing as I was reading that. I mean, AAAAH! But hysterical.

[M/tch M/lls]

Glad you're safe.

[Jackmormon]

How very dramatic! But, seriously, I'm glad to hear you're going to be okay.

[susan]

I still can't believe sweet Wreck bit you! That must have been an epic freak-out. I'm glad you're not mad at him.

[Kriston]

Bless you, Catherine, what you said was that "a dog bit you because of a squirrel", as if a squirrel had come between the two of you. I can't believe it myself.

[mrh]

That is quite a saga. I'm glad you're well and squirrel-free.

[information leafblower]

You have dogs in the house and they bite you instead of the squirrel? WTF? If you had a cat, that squirrel would be dead meat right about now. But glad you're OK.

[I don't pay]

I sure hope the entrance hole is extensively patched, because when cast into the utter darkness, they will make heroic efforts to reenter where they were before; the alternative, for them, is death. This is what catch-and-release, don't-hurt-the-poor-thing-ism fails to take into account: squirrels are highly territorial, and for good reason fear other squirrels, whose territory may be invisible to us but is most likely only a few feet away, so much so that they will expend almost any amount of energy on reentering, on a merely physical barrier, rather than encounter another. My next door neighbor cut his tree down, thereby depriving a family of squirrels of their home. As a consequence, he has fought a running, ten-year battle with multiple generations of this family, who have broken into his garage, now with every square inch of what was once wood wainscotting covered in flashing: no matter, they rip the shingles off the roof to get in. My wife and I, she in the converted house her office at Northwestern is situated in, I in our own attic, have this past year waged epic battles with them. Ours were finally trapped out, and I went with the exterminator with the last trapped squirrel his truck. When he opened the gate, a charnal house of trapped animals was displayed, a nightmare vision.
It might have been better had Wreck killed your squirrel, for he will certainly try to reenter.
(cross-commented at Grammar Police)

[TUL]

Something tells me you won't be purchasing a box of Honey Bunches of Oats anytime soon... glad to hear that you're OK though!

[The Goo]

I'm pretty sure the hilarity gravity of this story is why God put squirrels on earth.

[UnstoppableAwesomeness]

Isn't this how thriller revenge plots start?
[opening black and white scene of violent capture of squirrel by some brutish looking hipster thugs, blonde girl crying on the curb drenched in blood, pan out to view the city and the river... bag with squirrel dumped in river... squirrel escapes and is beached (at night) on the bank of the Potomac]
Trailer Narrator: She thought her fears were over. But what she didn't plan was for the ratsquirrel to seek revenge.
[cut to interior scene, blonde walks slowly to the window and peers through the transparent curtains down to the street below]
Rat Squirrel (wearing eye-patch and smoking a cig): I'm back be-atch! And this time, I'm not leaving until the job is done. (turns around in full length leather jacket and jumps on motorcycle)
[cue actors names interspersed with scenes of violent ratsquirrel on human action - think Hostel and Halloween]
Scarlett Johanssen as the Blonde
Jude Law as Roman the Hipster Thug
Cilian Murphy as Rat Squirrel
[interior shot of bathroom with Blonde lying on tile crying at the sight of the closed door... a claw crashes through the door created a hole followed by an eye peering through it]
Rat Squirrel: I... SEE... YOU!
[cut to release date]

PS: The Rat Squirrel looks like the rabbit from Donnie Darko!

[heather]

Um, oh my god. I can't believe wreck bit you! I can't believe you got a friggin squirrel in your room! I would have grabbed my laptop, run out of the house, and immediately found some wifi to look up new rentals. Glad you're okay, and I really hope that animal didn't go up the street.

[Scott Lemieux]

Yikes. I got a squirrel in my apartment last year, but fortunately I was able to shoo it away and the only bad effect was a lot of shit on the kitchen floor.

I still remember gasping to see it, though, especially since it was first thing in the morning...

[Steven]

Bad as this is - and I hope your leg heals OK - something arguably worse happened to a co-worker of mine. He was bitten, and a squirrel was the cause, but no dogs were involved. He was walking through a park when an apparently psychotic squirrel ran up to him, ran up his leg inside his pants, and bit his leg. WTF?

For years afterward his co-workers left acorns in his desk.

[John Emerson]

It's good you got bit by a dog and not the squirrel, because dogs get their rabies shots. Seriously, a vet friend of mine said that in PA squirrels are the most dangerous carriers of rabies, mostly because they're so cute.

[kv]

my friend's and I have always said that a DC squirrel is automatically more badass than any other local squirrel. MD? Lame. VA? Lazy. DC? Bad-Ass.

[Steven]

Oh, and perfect timing: the Long Branch Nature Center in Arlington is having Squirrel Appreciation Day this Sunday.

[LJ]

Oh my -- that's horrendous! I'm glad to hear you're ok. Hadn't realized DC was home to such bold squirrels!

[sean]

holy shit.

[mihow]

Wow, woman, I am so sorry to hear this!

[ramu]

you have to see this, for the squirrel...

http://www.syslog.com/~jwilson/pics-i-like/10725457e4.jpg