Squirrels are like my writing style; hyper, spazzy, and hard to follow.

You’d think as someone who has written professionally for years I’d have some semblance of how to piece together an idea in a blog post. Grammar, what even is that? Proper sentence structure is a myth. The English language is cursed and we all suffer its demise every day. We try to communicate in various mediums only to fail conveying our truest intents. Wait, this blog post is about squirrels.

You know, those cute little rodents that terrorize your bird feeders. Those that, anything short of a 12 gauge or high voltages of electricity will find a way to consume all your bird seed. Fluffy tails, buck teeth, beady eyes. Yup, those.

Well, in our household, we like squirrels.

But not literally “in” our household. You see, our welcome home present coming back from our honeymoon was a friendly neighborhood squirrel hiding in our basement. I’ll never forget that night. First evening home with my bride. Her, being the responsible adult that she is, decided to do some laundry. I, being the stereotypical lazy husband, did something else. While we are separated by a floor, I hear her scream. First night at home, newlyweds, my wife is in the basement screaming. Excellent start to your marriage, Joshua.

I ran downstairs in a panic really hoping it wasn’t a massive spider that spooked her. I don’t do spiders. If spiders overtake our basement, it’s time to start over. Take the basement away, fill it with concrete, I didn’t need it anyways. Thankfully it was not a spider. I saw a squirrel, however, the squirrel did not see me. This conspicuous rodent was blind in one eye, the one eye facing in my direction. Standing awkwardly close I contemplated what my next move was. Do I grab it and hope it isn’t going to bite me? Do I smack its rear and try to chase it out the front door? In my pondering it panicked and ran up into the insulation. Well, until next time my friend.

Now I just needed it out of my basement. I finally realized that there was only one of two ways to evict our squatter.

The easy way or the unfortunate way.

I quickly drove to the local Tractor Supply store and bought a “have-a-heart” trap, filled it with peanut butter and left it out overnight. Come to find out it was a fruitless endeavor. The trap shut close without anything inside. And suspiciously the peanut butter was gone. Now I understand why the alternative eviction option was on the table. However, I endured. I set it up again and again completely in vain. And after a third night I was beginning to be concerned that the squirrel would simply end up dead from lack of water. Yes, I left water out just in case it got thirsty. I’m not that cruel.

Fourth night rolls around. Actual conversation with my wife. “Hunny, by tomorrow the squirrel will be out of the basement. It will either be in the trap, or I’m going to call your dad and you are going to go somewhere for an hour. After that, the squirrel will no longer be in the basement.” She didn’t need details, she needed results. I would take care of this thing one way or another.

Now before you get all PETA on me, the thing was living in our basement for several days and was chewing up our insulation. I can’t imagine the health benefits of eating fiberglass, but that and a steady diet of peanut butter sustained our dear friend longer than its welcome. It needed to go.

Success.

I woke up with every intent of sending my wife on a shopping trip for the morning only to hear the rustling of our furry friend inside the trap. Upon closer review, it did not seem as thrilled about its newfound accommodations as I was. A quick trip to the great outdoors and carefully releasing the gate, it was back to being the squirrel it always wanted to be; partially blind, tending to her children, living in a hole in the tree directly across from our driveway. Her name was Gandalf the Gray. In our defense, we didn’t realize she was female when we named her.

Gandalf had babies.

A sentence you’d likely never expect to read, but true nonetheless. From what we could tell, she had three kittens. If you knew that baby squirrels were called “kittens”, I don’t believe you. Of the three kittens she had, two were exactly what you’d expect. They were fluffy, adorable, and naturally curious. Then there was Dougy. Dougy was the third babe who was, how you say, different.

Aptly named after a character on my favorite TV show, Burn Notice, Dougy was not like his siblings. He didn’t climb as high, run as fast, jump as far, or quite know how to “squirrel” like the others. He seemed to need additional assistance. He also wasn’t very concerned about human guests. It was as if he didn’t quite recognize the threat of a being 20x his size walking towards him until it was far too late.

We monitored Dougy for many weeks. He was growing, but still relatively stunted. His territory expanded little by little. He’d wander around the yard, grab a nut, “bury” it, wander some more, then resign to his hole for an afternoon nap. He eventually worked up the courage to wander out to the garage. Then the woods behind the garage. Then one day he left the cozy confines of our property and we never saw him again. We will never forget you, Dougy.

We like squirrels.

While my wife still desires a pet squirrel, my belief of how two cats and a husky would respond to our newly beloved pet led me to think it wouldn’t last 5 minutes. Don’t bother giving it a name, it will be someone's lunch before you know it.

In an effort to alleviate the constant requests of intentionally housing these rodents indoors, I decided to get my wife a squirrel feeder. Asking the lady at the store where I could find “squirrel feeders” was comical. She immediately went to show me where to find these then abruptly stopped and asked, “Did you mean squirrel repellent feeders or are you actually trying to feed the squirrels?” Feeling defensive, I naturally blamed my wife and stated that she was the one who wanted to feed the squirrels.

We now have many pet squirrels. And even more importantly, they are always outside the house. Probably for the best.