As if one squirrel wasn't enough, we had our second squirrel come down our chimney this past weekend. As I was out of the house on Saturday morning, Carolyn stayed home doing some stuff on the computer upstairs. All of a sudden she heard a scratching noise coming from downstairs. At first she thought someone was trying to break in. Later we found out it was ANOTHER squirrel that had squirrelled its way down the chimney. This time, we had closed the damper on our chimney, so that things couldn't come into the house.

Everyday this week, we've heard the squirrel during the day trying to get out. We've had two options: the first one was just to let it die in there of starvation (not a good idea), or open the damper and let it into our house (ALSO not a good idea).

Well, today the choice was made for us.

We called ABC Pest Control to have them come inspect the chimney, as well as look in the attic for other animals. The guy came and inspected the chimney damper. He slightly opened and closed the damper, which he found was stopped up with leaves and branches, and then closed it back up. I was concerned that he didn't close it tightly enough, but I figured he knew what he was doing. Two hours later, my concerns were fully realized. I came downstairs to see an emaciated squirrel casually strolling around our living room. Fortunately, the squirrel was so weak that it didn't make a run for it. So I opened the back patio door, and 30 seconds later, the squirrel just strolled on out. He walked over to the doorway, sniffed the freedom, looked around, and then walked on out. Hopefully he learns something from having done time in our chimney prison.

The nice thing was that since he hadn't eaten in 5 days, there was no squirrel poo lying around the house. According to Wikipedia, a well nourished squirrel can drop up to twenty poo pellets a day. TWENTY! Feel free to "drop" that nugget of information as a conversation starter at any Christmas parties you will be attending this weekend.