Epilogue: Day of the Squirrel

Aunt Maryellen and Uncle Randy picked us up from the airport and drove us home. By the time we got back, we had been up most of 24 hours. Once we got in the house (and were standing around shivering waiting for the furnace to warm the place up), we started noticing some odd things. The first thing we noticed was an odd smell, and then we saw "mouse" droppings in the kitchen. Then, Julie noticed a small fake plant knocked over. Things got worse in the bedroom, where everything on Ken's nightstand had been knocked onto the floor. A closer look showed that the blinds had been chewed and some of the cords were ripped!

We began looking around with a more careful eye and started noticing signs of, er, something all over the house. Besides the broken lamp and the blinds, our new sheer drapes in the living and dining room had been ruined. And there were a lot of droppings. Downstairs in the basement with a flashlight, feeling kind of vulnerable, we found some more things knocked over, and a probable entry point where some insulation had been pushed out of a gap below some ducting.

That was it. We knew something had been in the house, but we didn't know where it was. Both of us were a little freaked out. We decided to spend the night at a hotel (what the heck, we were already packed). We found a room down the road for a decent price, got a midnight snack at Wendy's and tried to sleep.

The next morning we did some research on Angie's List, made some phone calls, and found someone to come out on a Sunday. To make a long story short, he eventually found the red squirrel that had invaded our home. In our bed. We kid you not. Apparently, red squirrels get stressed out when they are trapped, and this one ran itself ragged in our bedroom and died between the mattress and the headboard near the middle of the mattress. Yuck.

We spent the entire day Sunday cleaning up the house (washing various things in hot water, shampooing all of the carpets and various pieces of upholstery, etc.). Needless to say, we will never forget this trip.