Hide Your Nuts

Vince crawled up into the attic to get my Christmas sweaters down for me last night. Well, it wasn't a crawl so much as a hoist. Our attic doesn't have stairs. I asked the builder to please put the access panel in the hall so I could install the drop down stairs, but they put it in the back closet. We have to drag a ladder in there to get up in it. And the only ladder that fits in that small closet isn't quite tall enough to go all the way to the top. So anytime we want to get up in the attic, we have to climb to the top rung of the ladder, then push off of the door (which opens inside the closet which is another long tirade because how are you supposed to put stairs in an access panel if a door is directly in your way below you? but I digress...), then hold on for dear life to the couple of 2" x 4" studs overhead & heave yourself up into the attic.

Now, if Vince & I were acrobats, this would be a breeze. Maybe we should install one of those climbing ropes that drops down from the rafters? Only, it's kind of hard to climb a rope when hauling storage bins up & down. So until we cut a different access hole, we're stuck with the attic that is difficult to access. The nice thing about our attic is that it is large with plywood already down & a light switch so you can see.

Vince called me up there to look at a new hole in the side of the attic up near the roof. It's rather large & neatly chewed. The chewer also brought some acorns in the attic to store. On the other side of this hole is our siding. It's right up near the round vent. We walked outside to see if we had any damage to our siding & we don't. So our new pet has somehow found his way down between the walls to this spot in our attic. We're assuming our new pet is a squirrel due to the large hole and the acorns. As a side note, we have no acorns in our yard since we don't have any trees, except for along the back property line. There are tons of houses down the road that have lots of trees, but for some reason, the squirrel has picked our house to set up shop.

We've never heard anything moving around up there, so it's a very quiet pet. I was reading on how to get rid of squirrels & found that fox urine, moth balls, and traps are the top favorites. I'm fresh out of fox urine, but I'm thinking moth balls or traps may be the way to go. And Vince is the lucky winner who gets to fix the hole in the attic. I think we have some concrete mix left in the garage....chew through that you filthy squatter!