My home was invaded this morning. (LONG)
Posted: 2004-04-12 08:39pm
I wake up this morning and hear a squeaking sound coming from the garage. The first time I find nothing, but the second time I hear it I find a squirrel sitting on the bars of the (closed) window. We have squirrels in our attic, but how this one got down here, I have no idea. I realized that if I let it out, it will just come back in. Despite being cute and cuddly (except if you try to hold one), squirrels are very destructive. I didn't enjoy doing what I had to do, even more so because I just could not give it the quick humane death I wanted to.
I found an angle weeder, which has a reach long enough to keep my hands away form its sharp teeth, and went after it. It hid behind several boxes, and I kept jostling the boxes to try to get it to come out, but it was too fast and the shelves made it awkward to stick my weapon in. It growled at me from behind the boxes, so I slammed them against the wall. That appears to be the point where the squirrel received its first injury. It ran across the garage and under an old treadmill, leaving it's tail sticking out. And tried moving the treadmill around to hopefully pin or crush it, but it got out and ran across the room.
I decided I needed reinforcements, so I let my dog in, who was baffled at first, seeing as how she is not normally allowed in the garage. But when she heard the growling, you could not keep her away. Unfortunately, the squirrel's small size gave it an advantage, and I realized I was going to have to let it out of the garage and into the house where it wold have fewer hiding places.
There are 5 rooms downstairs: the family room, my bedroom, the bathroom, the garage, and the large room that connects them all together. The large room was where I planned to finish this. The squirrel ran into the bathroom first, and made two attempts to jump into an open cabinet before my dog was on it, understandably ignoring the "no dog in bathrooms" rule. The squirrel started squealing, and my dog happily shook it in her mouth. But it escaped, and ran past me.
As it did this, not knowing what else to do, I kicked the little shit like a football, causing it to bounce off o fthe ceiling- and land on top of my open bedroom door. Vowing that it would not enter my bedroom, I leapt at the door and kicked it shut- which wsa met with a screech of pain, as I realized I had broken one of the squirrel's legs in the door. The thing jumped down, and my dog caught it again, really working it over. As I watched her do this, I said repeatedly "Good girl!" so she would understand this was a good thing (she has killed squirrels before and left them by the back door. With all of the trouble they cause us, a little help is greatly appreciated) I grabbed the weed angler, and told my dog to come here so she could let it go and let me finish it oiff. She only heard "Come here," and dropped the squirrel and came bounding happily up to me.
But the squirrel was still, its mouth wide open, its legs spread slackly. It was dead.
Or so I thought, until it hopped up back onto its feet ten seconds later, and took off for the bathroom.
The weed angler was years old, rusted, and not really that sharp anymore. So I had to use it more as a club. But the toilet in the bathroom does not workd properly, so I have the lid propped up between the wall and the toilet since I have been tryin to fix it- and the squirrel was hiding between the the porcelain toilet lid and the wall.
Believing that this would bring a swift end to the debacle, and grabbed the toilet lid, and slammed it down onto the squirrel- and was met only with more screeches and thrashing. Another, harder blow only gave more of the smae. Finally, it curled up in a corner, and seemed to be still.
I poked at it with the angler, and its eye sshot open, and its mouth opened wide in another scream. Desperate to end its suffering and those terrible cries, I slammed the flat end onto the squirrel over and over again until the thrashing stopped.
So when I had enogh of that, I pulled the squirrel out form behind the toilet with the angler, and it was finally dead, its beady eyes starting widely at nothing at all. As I pulled it out, its broken leg flopped over. Under closer inspection, part of its left side looked a little caved in.
Not taking any chances with the seeming Michael Myers of squirrels, I picked it up in a plastic bag, dropped it into another plastic bag, and tied it tight.
This afternoon, when I got home, I started wondering if it had been a male or a female. So I dig the bag out of the trash, open it up, and find-
-its tongue hanging by a piece of flesh out of its mouth. I didn't do that- its tongue had been sticking out, but it hadn't been torn up. So evidently, the squirrel had enough life in it to chew its tongue off as it suffocated in the plsatic bag.
And I decided that if ths ever happened again, to just let my dog handle it. She may not care about being humane, but she's still better at giving a quick death than me.
Here's my dog, btw (remove the space between //and freespace):
http:// freespace.virgin.net/alex.collingridge/beearl.jpg
I found an angle weeder, which has a reach long enough to keep my hands away form its sharp teeth, and went after it. It hid behind several boxes, and I kept jostling the boxes to try to get it to come out, but it was too fast and the shelves made it awkward to stick my weapon in. It growled at me from behind the boxes, so I slammed them against the wall. That appears to be the point where the squirrel received its first injury. It ran across the garage and under an old treadmill, leaving it's tail sticking out. And tried moving the treadmill around to hopefully pin or crush it, but it got out and ran across the room.
I decided I needed reinforcements, so I let my dog in, who was baffled at first, seeing as how she is not normally allowed in the garage. But when she heard the growling, you could not keep her away. Unfortunately, the squirrel's small size gave it an advantage, and I realized I was going to have to let it out of the garage and into the house where it wold have fewer hiding places.
There are 5 rooms downstairs: the family room, my bedroom, the bathroom, the garage, and the large room that connects them all together. The large room was where I planned to finish this. The squirrel ran into the bathroom first, and made two attempts to jump into an open cabinet before my dog was on it, understandably ignoring the "no dog in bathrooms" rule. The squirrel started squealing, and my dog happily shook it in her mouth. But it escaped, and ran past me.
As it did this, not knowing what else to do, I kicked the little shit like a football, causing it to bounce off o fthe ceiling- and land on top of my open bedroom door. Vowing that it would not enter my bedroom, I leapt at the door and kicked it shut- which wsa met with a screech of pain, as I realized I had broken one of the squirrel's legs in the door. The thing jumped down, and my dog caught it again, really working it over. As I watched her do this, I said repeatedly "Good girl!" so she would understand this was a good thing (she has killed squirrels before and left them by the back door. With all of the trouble they cause us, a little help is greatly appreciated) I grabbed the weed angler, and told my dog to come here so she could let it go and let me finish it oiff. She only heard "Come here," and dropped the squirrel and came bounding happily up to me.
But the squirrel was still, its mouth wide open, its legs spread slackly. It was dead.
Or so I thought, until it hopped up back onto its feet ten seconds later, and took off for the bathroom.
The weed angler was years old, rusted, and not really that sharp anymore. So I had to use it more as a club. But the toilet in the bathroom does not workd properly, so I have the lid propped up between the wall and the toilet since I have been tryin to fix it- and the squirrel was hiding between the the porcelain toilet lid and the wall.
Believing that this would bring a swift end to the debacle, and grabbed the toilet lid, and slammed it down onto the squirrel- and was met only with more screeches and thrashing. Another, harder blow only gave more of the smae. Finally, it curled up in a corner, and seemed to be still.
I poked at it with the angler, and its eye sshot open, and its mouth opened wide in another scream. Desperate to end its suffering and those terrible cries, I slammed the flat end onto the squirrel over and over again until the thrashing stopped.
So when I had enogh of that, I pulled the squirrel out form behind the toilet with the angler, and it was finally dead, its beady eyes starting widely at nothing at all. As I pulled it out, its broken leg flopped over. Under closer inspection, part of its left side looked a little caved in.
Not taking any chances with the seeming Michael Myers of squirrels, I picked it up in a plastic bag, dropped it into another plastic bag, and tied it tight.
This afternoon, when I got home, I started wondering if it had been a male or a female. So I dig the bag out of the trash, open it up, and find-
-its tongue hanging by a piece of flesh out of its mouth. I didn't do that- its tongue had been sticking out, but it hadn't been torn up. So evidently, the squirrel had enough life in it to chew its tongue off as it suffocated in the plsatic bag.
And I decided that if ths ever happened again, to just let my dog handle it. She may not care about being humane, but she's still better at giving a quick death than me.
Here's my dog, btw (remove the space between //and freespace):
http:// freespace.virgin.net/alex.collingridge/beearl.jpg
.
