Thursday, February 09, 2006

The squirrel is gone

Last night when I got home, I did a little "squirrel scene investigation" and determined that the squirrel had somehow gotten in to our place through the laundry room. There's open access from that room to the space above our ceiling, so that made sense.

I decided that the easiest place to trap him would be right back in the laundry room. We have a Havahart live trap, so I set it up and baited it with some pieces of bread with almond extract on them. We hadn't heard any squirrel noises, and we were a bit concerned that he might have gotten trapped someplace inside our walls.

I checked the trap first thing in the morning, and there was nothing. I checked again a couple of hours later, and there was the squirrel. Almond extract works quite well. We're pretty certain it's the same squirrel. There's always a chance that we might have attracted a second one to come in from outside, but I didn't see any signs of that. I think this one got in around the dryer vent hose. We're going to try to get our landlord, Mr. Useless, to put some kind of screen over the vent to keep animals out. If a squirrel got in, then mice can get in even easier. I'd do it myself, only it's in a concrete wall, and I don't feel like spending money on hardware that will properly mount in concrete. It's not my house, and not my responsibility to spend my money upgrading or maintaining it.

Getting this fixed is going to be much more difficult than getting rid of the squirrel was.

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