Don’t ever take advice from your friends on squirrel removal from your chimney, unless the advice is to call a wildlife trapper.  Getting a squirrel removed out of a chimney is not as easy as my best friend said it would be, and I swear the guy just wanted to see if I’d actually listen to him.  All I learned is NEVER to listen to him.

I had an awesome little condo that’s close to my work, and since it was nicer than any of my friends’ places, they would all come and hang out here.  In fact, I didn’t even know I had a squirrel in the chimney until my best friend woke up on my couch facing the fireplace and saw the squirrel just staring at him.  The squirrel took off back up the chimney.  That’s the morning he gave me the terrible advice.

He told me to make sure the glass doors in front of the fireplace were shut tight so the squirrel couldn’t get out.  Then, for two or three days, put out some salty snacks where he could reach them.  Salted peanuts, chips, pretzels, that sort of thing.  After a couple of days, the squirrel will get really thirsty, so that’s when you give it a water dish with 50% water and 50% vodka.  Get it nice and drunk, and then you can grab it and toss it outside.

I was kind of an idiot back then, so I took him seriously.  He was kind of an idiot, too, so he might have actually been serious when he gave me the advice on removing a squirrel from the chimney.  For three days, I’d open the glass fireplace doors just enough to shove in another salty snack, and then shut it up tight.  The snacks would disappear by the end of the day.  I only saw the squirrel once.  It was sitting next to the food dish gobbling up some peanuts.  As soon as it saw me, it ran back up the chimney.

On day four, I poured water and vodka into a small bowl and put it in the fireplace.  My friend came over to watch to see if it would work. For hours, we hung out in the front room, gaming and waiting to see if the squirrel would come down for a drink.  It never did.  It finally occurred to me that the squirrel hadn’t gotten in my chimney through the glass doors.  It had to have crawled down inside from the roof, and I hadn’t even thought of closing the flue.  That means, for days, it’s been going back outside after eating salty snacks and drinking wherever squirrels drink.  I hadn’t made it thirsty enough to get drunk on the vodka mixture I’d provided.  I’d only made sure the squirrel knew it could return to my house day after day for food.  As I said, I was an idiot back then.

Despite my friend’s pleading, I wasn’t about to repeat the experiment with the flue closed.  I didn’t want to get a squirrel bite as I reached up the chimney to close the flue, so I finally made a good decision and called a professional for squirrel removal from my chimney.  They came, removed the squirrel from the chimney, and my life went back to normal.  Well, as normal as life can be when you’re an idiot with an idiot friend.