Squirrel Problems

Squirrel on a branch
Squirrel on a branch, waiting to come inside.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

I just moved into my apartment about two months ago, and now I have squirrel problems.

All of a sudden, I have a new roommate who’s just driving me crazy.  He comes and goes whenever he pleases.  He acts like he owns the place.  He takes some of my stuff, and breaks other stuff – he ripped a hole right in the window screen and doesn’t even care.  He’s always loud, especially in the morning, knocking things over, constantly going in and out of my place, feet pounding and waking me up.

My poor cat doesn’t know what to make of it all.  She just sits there watching it, trying to stay out of his way.  He acts like she’s not there and will even step on her from time to time.  Once, he picked up her cat food and walked off with it.  I was gone that morning, so I didn’t notice until I got back from work that night.

Then, one day, he disappeared behind my entertainment center and stripped some of the wires back there.  I don’t know what he intended to do, but he just left the job half-finished, the insulation ripped right off of the wires.  I haven’t been able to get my DVD player to work ever since, but it’s not like he cares.

I’m at my wits end, because the worst part of it is he doesn’t pay rent.  He doesn’t have to.  He’s a squirrel.

My squirrel problems have got to end soon.  This new “roommate” of mine literally leaves his crap all over the place – in my sock drawer, on kitchen counters, on the living room floor.  I found a squirrel hair in my cereal bowl the other day and just gagged and threw away the cereal box.

I thought problem squirrels limited themselves to chewing people’s trees and gardens, or crawling inside their attics.  My parents have a nice place outside the city, on a ½ acre lot with lots of trees, and they’ve had problems with squirrels every now and then.  They have several birdfeeders, so I wasn’t surprised when my mom told me about a squirrel that was performing all kinds of acrobatics to get at the bird seed.  I warned her that they’d end up with a squirrel nest in the attic some day.

But, squirrel problems were the last thing on my mind when I got my apartment in the city.  I’d asked the landlord if he’d had any problems with mice or rats or pigeons, but I failed to ask about squirrels.  Apparently, I’m the only one of his tenants that has this problem with a squirrel walking in and out of the window, making himself at home in my apartment.  I guess I need to just repair the window screen and call a professional wildlife removal service company.  Otherwise, I’ll have to take his share of the rent out of the nut collection he stuck inside my couch.

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