Our daughter has squirrel problems. You might be thinking that everyone with a backyard and a tree has mischievous squirrel problems. But her problems are monumental. A squirrel fell through the air into her house.
For years her home has been the squirrel mecca of the neighborhood. She does not feed these visitors, but she does have a bubbling pond, lush trees, moist flower beds and sturdy lawn furniture.
The squirrel army has driven her crazy by chewing up everything in sight…her lovely orange patio chairs, wicker couch, the awning over her deck, a patio umbrella and more. Plants in her garden disappear overnight and tree limbs fall. Her yard is squirrel mayhem.
I must note that squirrels, like rabbits, have teeth that never stop growing. They need to continuously file down their teeth by gnawing on hard objects. Our daughter’s yard appears to be their favorite place to perform these necessary dental functions. I suggested she might strew giant squirrel chew toys around her yard and deck, perhaps PVC pipes.
The squirrel situation peaked last weekend. She was gone overnight and came home to discover the screen to her open kitchen skylight on the middle of the kitchen floor. Her immediate thought was a burglary, and her wise reaction was to call the police and wait outside.
Madison’s finest arrived promptly and searched the house. No burglar was found cowering in a closet. However, the frame on her patio door was chewed to ribbons and a large hole was gnawed through the screen of an open upstairs window.
The police declared the intruder was a squirrel. He then said, “We don’t do squirrels”, and promptly left the scene. Not wanting to have a squirrel taking up residence, our daughter took up a neighbor’s offer to bring over her dogs. The canines did a good sniff through all three floors of the house, and no squirrel was flushed out.
Confident that the house was safe, our daughter called her insurance company about the ruined, 3,000 dollar patio door. “Your policy does not cover any animal damage” was the bad news from the insurance lady. For most of us, what our insurance policies do cover could be written on a postage stamp.
Our daughter is being remarkably upbeat after having a squirrel fall through her skylight and chew its way back to nature. It could have been a human intruder or a raccoon. A raccoon would not have exited but would have opened all the kitchen cupboards and had a feast.
The moral here is that squirrels and insurance companies always have the upper hand.
6
Squirrels can cause so much damage. We had one chew up boards on our fence. To add insult to injury after chewing part of the post holding the gate the critter buried peanuts in the post. We have never fed the pests either.
We have been lucky. Dare I say the numerous squirrels in our Tooley Cafe stick to chewing things in the forest.
Goodness .. . . how annoying!