A Couple of Things.

It started out with a phone call as these things usually do. The voice on the other end, the renter of my cottage, says in a unusually calm voice, "Susan, a couple of things." I am expecting something along the lines of a small plumbing or wireless issue. Instead I hear the words "the phones are not working and a squirrel ran across my husband's face as he was sleeping this morning." Just like that. Not a great deal of emotion. Just a little communication that might be of interest to me. I think, oh please let him have been sleeping out on the front porch or the back lawn or something. Just not in the cottage! No such luck. She says "he must have come out of the walls somewhere. The last we saw him he was climbing up the refrigerator. We are almost packed and ready to go. Just thought you would want to know. We had a great stay. Bye!"

Now mind you I am four hours away and new renters are coming in two days expecting a "squirreless vacation." He was not listed in the brochure. I call my caretaker and explain the situation to him. He says he will go over within the hour and set a live trap. But his first option will be to try and locate the little red squirrel and shoo him out the door. Real easy like. The way one would want it to be if he could control tough situations like this. No such luck. Another phone call. "Susan, a couple of things. First of all, the good news is I found the squirrel hiding in the back bedroom. The bad news is I tried to chase him out the back door lhe ran upstairs and jumped into the heating vent and dropped three floors down to the furnace. I heard him land with a thud but I didn't hear anything after that. Which leaves us with a couple of bad scenarios. One, he is dead and will start smelling within a couple of days in this heat or he may just be "knocked out" (that is truly what he said) and when he comes to, he will be running across your new renters faces." This is not good. So I jump in the car and drive eighty miles per hour all the way to the cottage. I pass some of my parent's friends along the way around Green Bay who call my Dad to inquire basically where the fire is. Nice. Just what Dad needs to hear about his fifty-year old recently divorced daughter.

At any rate, I make the trip in three hours and twenty minutes. I look in the front window and see the empty live trap. My heart sinks. I think he must be dead. I can almost anticipate the rotting rodent smell that one never forgets. I enter the cottage slowly and hear a sound I would not normally be able to identify except for the image of the squirrel climbing the refrigerator door described to me earlier that day. What a sight! I run up to the refrigerator hoping I can encourage him out the door. No such luck. He runs behind the refrigerator. So I do what I think any woman would when there is a nagging rodent problem that needs to be corrected. I open a bottle of red wine, open the back door, open a book, sit on the couch and wait him out. Stupid! Not going to work no way, no how. My neighbor and his wife come over to help me. They have been made aware of the situation. I walk over to the refrigerator. Being the ever positive thinker, I am fully anticipating a scene out of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where the squirrel jumps out of the tree onto Chevy Chase's face. Only here he will jump on to my kindly neighbor's face or mine! We pull the frig out which is thankfully on rollers and look behind it. Gary, Lisa and I are armed with weapons, an oar, a mop and a broom handle. We are ready for war. Right on cue the squirrel delivers and he is jumping around the kitchen like he is stepping on hot coals. We are laughing and screaming. He has no intention of going out the door quietly. He runs under the couch. We make a little path for him to get out the door easily. It feels like the same set-up as when we used to make a path for the sand castle water to go down to the bay. Except this did not work that way. He runs in circles always ending up under the couch. Unbelievably he jumps between my legs and I am screaming and laughing so hard that I have no strength left in my hands to hold the mop. Finally, somehow, we eventually get him out the door and slam it shut behind him. Ah sweet victory. As I went to sleep that night with the light on I contemplated how it took three fifty year olds to overcome a little red squirrel.