Tenant problems.

It’s a drowsy Tuesday. It’s damp; my world is covered in a blanket of soggy yellow leaves and the floor of my Jeep has a puddle on it. It is the kind of day I want to stay in bed snuggled with my two dogs and my sister’s dog and cat. Husband is coming home for six days on Thursday. My tummy is all butterflies.

Our roof, it seems, has become home to a few creatures that keep my dogs up all night with their skittering and scratching in the bay window above our heads. A few weeks ago, I discovered the space where they’re possibly getting in—a large gap in the siding under the soffit of our bedroom bay window. Before, I noticed a smaller crack up in the very high eave on the other side of the house, where Batty McBat and the Clan McBat have apparently set up home. I’m okay with bats, more bats, fewer insects… And it’s neat in the summertime, when it’s dusk and you start to see them come out, and you can hear them squeaking just barely within my hearing range. Very cool. They are usually quiet residents, that are largely beneficial (I won’t think about the guano up in the roof space…) however Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel McDouglas, and I’m thinking perhaps many little McDouglases, having fattened up on our plentitude of peanuts and seed and corn through the spring and summer, have gladly taken up residence in the thick bed of cozy insulation; and they are not exactly ideal tenants--especially when every ten minutes, my dogs jerk their heads up and growl at the ceiling all through the night. The only reason I’m getting any sleep at all is because I sleep with earplugs.

I’m concerned about how to evict them. I suppose I’ll have to discuss it with husband when he returns on Thursday (yay yay yay yay!!!). I don’t want to kill or hurt the little guys, but I don’t want them in there, or causing by their presence, other creatures (such as skunks or raccoons) to feel compelled to make it a multiple species unit. Oh no.

I sincerely want to go a full night without hearing the telltale tap-dance of my furry tenants over my head, and then suffering through the unavoidable successions of bristling of canine hackles, growling, staring at empty ceilings, keyed-up alertness and lots of jumping on and off of the bed to investigate possible other noises. Simon and Flower have told me in none-so-many words (mostly in half-growls and barks) that they would be glad to rid me of the squatters, all I need to do is lift them up into the attic-space and let them solve the problem for me. I told them that involving them in the eviction would cause too much of a disturbance for the other upside-down suspended tenants and that it’s not my ideal solution. They do not agree—and they remain most keen on every little noise the McDouglases make.

Hopefully my husband will have ideas for less violent solutions. I hope so, anyway. I foresee a winter of much coming and going for midnight snacks. Oddly, Douglas squirrels are not nocturnal. So then do I have to worry that this is not the McDouglas family up there, but instead the LePew family? Oh the horror.

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