If you recall in Baby Toes Blues, our first order of business on the cabin (after duct-taping Dave’s toes together) was squirrel proofing the soffits with double layers of mesh. There was evidence of a squirrel presence that needed addressing before they hunkered down for the winter, isolating in place with kith and kin and a good bottle of gin.

The fortification of the roof structure was challenging. It involved ladder acrobatics with arms extended overhead, staple gun in one hand and wire mesh in the other, hoping the ladder-holding spouse wasn’t harboring resentments that needed airing.

We were confident there were no rodents at home before we started stapling. Dave had blown compressed air into the squirrel holes that ran from one side of the cabin to the other while I banged on the ceiling inside uttering voodoo curses and death threats. We heard nothing.

“Pretty sure there’s nobody home!” Dave yelled while limping carefully off of the ladder. “Let’s get this place sealed up before they come back with a fresh stash of nuts!”

We spent all day getting the job done. It was not fun. It was cold and windy and the edge of my mitten kept getting stuck in the wire mesh with each fresh staple slammed in place.

Around dusk, Dave ladder-bound and I half-heartedly stabilizing his perch, a red squirrel sprang out of the forest. He skipped across a fallen log, scrambled up a Beech tree that leaned towards the cabin, and leapt onto the roof. This guy was a pro. He had done this hundreds of time.

First he went to his front door. Wire mesh.

Then he bounded to his back door. More wire mesh.

Panicked, he scrambled to and fro and tried to eat through wire mesh. No luck.

Red made a slow leap off the roof, walked down Big Beech, squatted sadly on Fallen Log and stared at us.

I felt a bit sick. And creeped out. It is eerie being watched by a silent jury of one, condemnation evident in each blink of their eye.

I should have listened to the creepy feeling. The feeling was actually premonition snorting: You think you guys have just outsmarted squirrels?!”

Karma

The following weekend we went back to check on the job. Wire mesh outside was intact! After a smug high-five and fist pump we got down to the next job on the list: cutting up fallen logs to clear the pathway to remove an abandoned oil tank. After the axe-embedded-in-snow-pile incident, the chainsaw remains safely in Dave’s hands. Until I get my operator’s certificate. Then the chainsaw and chaps are fair game.

A few hours later as daylight was quickly fading, we retreated into the cabin to warm up. Dave stood in the doorway of the bedroom that has become our tool staging area. He suddenly froze mid-sentence.

“Do you hear that?!” His crazy dog hearing had just been piqued.

I heard nothing and rolled my eyes. Dave is always hearing things, often in the middle of important discussions, that have him scurrying off to investigate.

I was just about to launch a sermon about his paranoia when my peripheral vision registered slight motion.

I tiptoed towards Dave’s frozen stance.

Inches above his head, nestled cozily between the exposed vapor barrier and pink insulation, was a red squirrel.

I instructed Dave to slowly lift his gaze. He only had to tilt his head a couple of inches.

Gaze lifted, Dave blinked at the squirrel.

Squirrel blinked back at Dave. Time stood still.

Then slowly, cheekily, the squirrel rubbed its body against the vapor barrier, inches from Dave’s dumbfounded countenance, leaving a nasty, oily squirrel-smear in its wake before disappearing into the insulation.

Dave looked straight ahead and walked slowly towards the front door. “I need a minute,” he whispered.

Pretty sure there’s nobody home! echoed in my mind. Nobody home, my arse!

You know how many were home? Eight. Eight squirrels were home. We had forgotten the cardinal rule of rodent proofing: leave an escape route.

Yes, I (now) know, YouTube is full of helpful videos expounding the importance of leaving a one-way squirrel door when sealing things up. I discovered them too late.

Idiot Tax

We decided to live trap the squirrels, at first believing we had only sealed in Red’s unlucky spouse.

After purchasing and baiting the trap, we caught our first squirrel. I could hear Dave’s soothing reassurances while bringing it down from the rafters: “It’s okay little guy. Stop banging your head against the door. I’ll get you outside soon and you can rejoin your family.”

• 

• 

With each subsequent squirrel, the empathetic murmurs of comfort were quickly replaced with a desperate: “How many more of you are there?!”

With the round-trip being just under 200km, driving up to release and re-bait EACH SQUIRREL, we figure this mistake has cost us a few hundred dollars. I say this idiot tax is karmic debt. Dave says this is what happens with poor planning. Same difference.

We’ve paid our fair share of idiot tax over the years. I read in one reddit post about a guy who spontaneously bought a non-refundable airplane ticket for the next day and then discovered his passport had expired. I felt a bit better.

It has been a couple of months now since the last squirrel was freed from the cabin. We were recounting this experience recently while driving up one snowy afternoon while playing, if the cabin were a British Pub, it would be called… You can play this game with just about anything.

Some possibilities were:

• Ye Olde Rotten Floorboards
• Two Idiots and a Dream
• Ye Olde Sterling Sinkhole or The Money Pit
• The Drunken Monkey
• The Bleeding Wallet

But the winner is:

The Earl of Squirrel Smear

Ye Olde Earl of Squirrel Smear. I like it. I don’t think we’d get many patrons, but I like it.

Karma Cabin Lesson #6 Always remember to give yourself (and vermin) an escape route. We all deserve the right to change course, walk in a new direction with head held high and pride intact.