Friday, May 28, 2004

How I spent this evening

I was sitting in my home office geeking away on the laptop and I hear my wife give a 'get over here right now, I need help' call -- I'm thinking 'kids', 'injury', 'fire' -- something along those lines. It turns out that we had a flying squirrel in the house.

About 9 years ago we had a family of flying squirrels take up residence in our walls and one of them ended up biting Griffin (18 months old at the time) and he had to go through a series of rabies shots. He had a fever reaction to the shots, but fortunately Tylenol/Advil kept the temperature down enough for the month. Over a few nights I caught all the baby flying squirrels and the mother (who all went off to the NH wild animal people for rabies tests on their brains [all negative] -- a neighborhood cat got one [the male?])

So I suppose Wendy does have a reason to be a little freaked out.

Contrary to what animal control may tell you -- 1) they are not nice docile animals, 2) yes, they are native to NH and 3) yes they do like to fly/glide. Just like the little bastard who climbed up our wooden beams and glided in the living room (twice!) tonight.

A long story short -- after chasing it around the living room/kitchen it hid in the closet near the front door. The closet just stuffed with all kinds of crap. After pulling a bunch of stuff out, Wendy let out a very impressive scream as the flying squirrel made a break for the front door and was gone.

It is an hour later now, and after thanking the the nice neighbor and policeman, I'm back in my office. But now drinking some Port.

Good night.

BTW, I'm pinning the blame on Addy and Emma for leaving the door open this evening and giving the beastie a chance to come in.