We live in the city. As such, we’re not exposed to a whole lot of wildlife. In fact, last fall, when I took my students on a tour of St-Henri, I realized that urbanites really don’t know what true wildlife is ~ because these students were talking about grey squirrels the way I might talk about encounters with, say, a moose.
Having grown up in a rural area, I am a lot more complacent about city-based wildlife, which seems to consist of squirrels, pigeons, and the occasional raccoon. Since we have a backyard (really more of a back-foot-and-a-half), we do have a lot of animal activity, mostly in the form of squirrels scampering along the overhead wires and pigeons trying to nest in the eaves.
Until this winter, that is.
This year, the squirrels took advantage of the inroads made by the pigeons (or, as my ornithologically-minded Dad would have it, the ‘rock doves’), and broke into the crawl-space between the ceiling and the roof of our house.
Initially, this was annoying because of all the coming and going, since the traffic seemed to go right up the balcony door (think tiny claws scrambling up glass and you’ll understand why this was annoying). Then we realized the squirrels were actually in the ceiling ~ we were tipped off by the pitter patter of little feet running overhead.
OK, obviously not an ideal situation.
The other night I came home to discover a pile of plaster on my desk…
…and looked up to see three little holes in the ceiling.
Yesterday morning, I called the Humane Wildlife people, who impressed me by (a) not sounding judgmental when I admitted these animals have been living up there for at least a month, and (b) sending a technician this morning.
So, three hours and $550 later, we are squirrel-free, and the squirrels – including the soon-to-be-mother whose nesting created the holes in the ceiling – are ousted, but alive.
All of this merely to explain why I was compelled to find and share this:
If you have time, watch the one with the cat-herders, too