See that? No, not the stupid dove that sits on the peak of the roof all the time. Those round things...at the bottom of the white pipes. Those are boots. Don't worry...I didn't know that either. I do now...but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Back in June I heard the weirdest sound coming from my scrapbook room...almost like the ticking of a bomb. Wayne would say the room often looks like a bomb already went off in there, but I digress. When I went to investigate, I could see it was coming from a plastic sack on the table but I couldn't figure out why it was making that strange sound. Enter Wayne who simply looked up and said water is coming out of the vent overhead. When it dripped and hit the plastic, it made a ticking sound instead of a plop. Oh, great...it's raining outside and the roof is leaking.
A cute little fireman named Paul came to my rescue. Well, he's a fireman one day out of every three and he fixes roofs on the other two. Hiram gave me his name; he'd gotten it from Dr. Dale. Good recommendations, for sure. Paul climbed up on the roof (a very fireman like thing to do) and fixed the leak. The boot was loose, he reported. I had no idea what a boot was but if it was fixed and I didn't have to worry about leaks, I didn't need to know.
Things rocked along happy and dry for a couple of months until all of a sudden in the middle of one of our thunderstorms, I heard the drip-drip-drip in the scrapbook room. Sure enough...it was leaking again in exactly the same place. I called Paul.
This time the boot wasn't just loose, it was broken. Do you have squirrels in your yard? he asked. Apparently the boot was damaged by squirrels. He went on to tell me how squirrels ate through the stucco and got into the attic in Hiram's house and how they'd eaten things on Dr. Dale's roof too. I knew all those things and also how the evil varmints had gnawed on the metal breaker box at Hiram's house, too. Yes, I've had an intense dislike for squirrels for years and this certainly didn't make them any more popular with me. I looked out in the backyard after he left and there were five of them scampering around. I'm sure they were plotting when to snack on the new the shiny new boots.
So I'm armed and dangerous again. That's right, the pellet gun is back out of the closet and I'm protecting my new $175 boots from these marauding invaders...now that I know what boots are. Those boots are made for keeping my house dry, not as a meal for rodents with fuzzy tails. Oh, not to worry if you're a squirrel lover...they're not in much danger; I'm not that good of a shot. But I can scare them and I am persistent. They now literally run for the woods when they see me.
Snakes. Squirrels. I guess you could say life at our house is a zoo.
We've had a real big problem with squirrels. They ate right thru Bill's workshop wall. And to make matters worse, the neighbors actually FEED them with those cute little squirrel feeders. Apparently they don't like their house/garage/workshop.
Posted by: Judi Freihoff | September 14, 2010 at 02:15 AM
Gosh darn squirrels. Very annoying and expensive varmints. I had one chew through my window screen and come into the house through the hole he made. Grrrrr....They are cute from a distance, but up close are a major pain in the neck! Good luck!
Posted by: Jeanne | September 14, 2010 at 06:28 AM
Well hunh. I never knew squirrels could do all that much damage. Didn't know they cared about getting inside my house. That's a creepy thought!
We used to have a tulip tree right at the edge of our small patio, off the family room. My husband loves birdwatching, and he had placed a suet feeder on the tree. We were really getting a lot of birds at that feeder. And a lot of squirrels. It got to the point where, one day, Dennis hared off out of the family room, through the garage door, and to the back yard, where he threw a couple of big sticks at some offending squirrel. I guess he was fed up and thought the squirrel might remember that a psycho lived in the house with the suet feeder?
They make t-shirts for this, did you know that? http://www.zazzle.com/i_hate_squirrels_in_the_scope_shirt-235364810877644164
Posted by: Jan C. | September 14, 2010 at 07:58 AM
The visual of you aiming a pellet gun at the roof is too much!! Do you KNOW how much my friends would laugh if I did that? But you know what? We've had a leak for YEARS for which no one can find the source and I'm gonna be inspecting any nearby boots now and may have to invest in a pellet gun!! Every time we have a thunderstorm (and lately that's frequently), the can light in the 20-foot ceiling above the fireplace pours water! Never thought to blame the squirrels, but now they have become "persons of interest". lol
Posted by: MilliD | September 14, 2010 at 09:25 AM