Sunday, June 27, 2010

The Squirrel Days of Summer



JAN: I like to create characters who are sleuths, but I'm not much of sleuth in real life, at least not when it comes to any kind of mechanical mystery.

When we came home from a weekend of island breezes on Martha's Vineyard,to a airtight house and an air conditioning that wouldn't flip on, my solution was to wait until the morning when I could call "the air conditioning guy."

But while I went off to buy groceries, my sleuth husband lit his pipe and did his Sherlock Holmes thing. After determining that all the circuit breakers were okay, he wondered what else could cut the electricity that wasn't getting to the thermostat. Little tiny teeth that's what.

Anyway, when I came home, he was quite excited to drag me up the attic (you can't believe how hot it was in 80 degree weather) and show me how the squirrels had not only eaten through the wires, but also turned the air handler unit into a clever place to store acorns.

Sherlock fixed the problem -- luckily, in this heat.
Apparently, it was an excellentyear for acorns and a tough one on air conditioning units.

7 comments:

  1. Yeah for your clever husband...and don't even get me started on squirrels!

    I'm totally in your camp Jan, call the xxx guy in the morning!

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  2. We have just had squirrels move into our neighborhood. Never seen them before, so I'm anticipating trouble. And we have more than our share with deer. We have a fenced in patio so that I can grow roses. I looked down from the balcony and all the roses had gone. Gates were still shut. No way a deer could get in. But then I spotted the twin fauns in my patio. They had squeezed between the bars of the gate. Now we have a trellis across the gate! What next?

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  3. Yes, they look so cute from far away, but they are really just rodents.

    With sharp, tiny, teeth.

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  4. Call the guy! Thats my number two go-to.

    MY number one--just wait and it will fix itself.

    This is actually sometmes successful. Not so much with squirrels.

    HAve fun in MV, JAnnie!

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  5. My hubster's one of those, "I can figure it out and fix it" folks. For which I'm grateful, although he did have to call the critter guy when we had a litter of baby raccoons in the crawl space. Had to cut a hole in the kitchen ceiling to get to them.

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  6. Those squirrels cause all kinds of problems. My husband has had them nest in his pickup truck twice! They chewed up the wiring so it wouldn't start. It really hadn't been THAT long since he'd started it, either.

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  7. Hi Jody,
    It's those little tiny, rodent teeth.....

    Terry,
    I'm grateful for my husband's fix it qualities, too. He jokes that he's my 24-hour support desk for computer problems.

    I keep him busy.

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