Bill Murray and Me
Most of you have seen or at least are familiar with Caddyshack. It's a classic movie now, and probably a month doesn't go be when I see that it's showing on some random channel. One thread that runs through this movie is goofy Carl Spackler, a Vietnam vet who seemed a bit shell shocked, now groundskeeper who has an epic battle with a gopher throughout the whole film. The gopher was doing what gophers do, tunneling, burrowing, and leaving mounds all round the beautifully manicured golf course of which crazy Carl was responsible. Spackler's conquest is very serious One particular scene has Carl saying:
"Licensed to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. A man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote."
And in another scene, "I have to laugh, because I've outsmarted even myself. My enemy, my foe, is an animal. In order to conquer the animal, I have to learn to think like an animal. And, whenever possible, to look like one. I've gotta get inside this guy's pelt and crawl around for a few days."
In his efforts he tries a fire hose and then a rifle to no avail. Carl finally resorts to making C4 explosive gopher decoys and spreading them around the gopher holes which culminates in a massive fireball reminiscent of what the veteran experienced in Vietnam.
It's Carl vs. Gopher. Pretty sure the gopher won.
I feel your pain, Carl. I've been in my own battle with a rodent for the last year. It all started months ago sometime when we heard some creature running over our heads in the living room and scratching noises and the same type of scampering sounds in the master bedroom/bath/closet above us. I called a wild animal removal place to see what the cost would be to have someone come out and deal with whatever it was. Behind the back fence are woods and a small creek which is really beautiful, but offers a whole host of critters a place to stay. So it could have been anything. I really didn't care so much what it was. I just wanted it gone. $350 seemed a little steep to me, so I went the Carl Spackler route and decided I'd try on my own.
We live in a two story house with an interesting design, so we actually have not just one attic, but three. I had to figure out if this creature was in one of the attics or if he was in the space between the first level ceiling and the second level floor. I determined it was most likely the attic beside the second level game room.
A guy in the neighborhood loaned me a live trap and a game camera to both visually see what was squatting in our attic and try to find a new hotel for it. We set it up and waited impatiently to catch the thing. The marshmallows the neighbor told us to use for bait in the trap only worked to apparently fatten the sucker up. The bait was gone, but the trap wasn't tripped...and for whatever reason we weren't seeing anything but a mouse on the trail cam. I KNEW Mickey wasn't what I heard doing the 50 yard dash above our heads, although with all of those marshmallows he was well on his way. The next treat he go was Decon Delight. All this time, I had been looking around the exterior trying to find out how this other critter got into the attic, but saw nothing at all.
We finally didn't hear the thing anymore so we gave all of the equipment back to our friend, feeling somewhat better, but still curious as to what it had been living rent free in my house. Randomly we'd hear something but it was brief and then silence for weeks. I finally surmised it was possibly a squirrel which had gone from tormenting Bear in the back yard, knowing exactly how long it would take Bear to sprint 300 mph across the back yard to get to the fence so he could either run up a tree or hop the fence into the woods. Bear was determined but never got him. Would have saved me the following drama.
Some time later, we heard in the master bath/walk in closet area what sounded like possibly two creatures fighting. My wife and I both listened to what sounded like something between Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel having some Saturday morning 'brown chicken brown cow' or the filming of a full blown squirrel orgy happening between the ceiling and floor above us. It was wild and animal for sure.
I had to think quickly. What to do? First I got a yardstick and started hitting the ceiling with it to break up the action. I'm sure Mr. Squirrel was NOT happy with that interruption. Next, I had to figure out how to get them out. I don't work for National Geographic, so the coitus (or whatever) was just annoying. This time, I surmised that the attic space over the garage would be the place to help him find a way of escape. I opened the scuttle in the ceiling, put some dogfood under the opening on the garage floor, and went back in to make some noise.
Not too much later, my wife heard scratching noises in the garage as she was in the laundry room next to it. She knew she wasn't going to open the door and have a Clark Griswold 'SQUIRREL!!' moment. Wisely, she went out the front door, made her way to the garage door keypad, quickly typed in the code and ran away from the door to watch what was going to happen. On her phone video, the squirrel looks around the corner from inside the garage to see where SHE was. They made eye contact. My wife was thinking 'What happens if he comes THIS way??' and the squirrel looked very hesitant like he was thinking 'What happens if she comes THIS way??' The squirrel left black tire tracks across the driveway to get to a shrub beside the curb and looks around it at my wife briefly before he kicked in the afterburners and ran north across the neighbors lawns to get away.
Whew! Well that was one. We knew there was another. I still had nagging questions lingering about how those damned things got into my house. I knew if I didn't find out the entry point, I'd be doomed to more squirrel parties in my house. This time, looking around the perimeter of the house, I looked up on the north side of the house and see this:
AaaaHAAAAA!!!! you sucker, I've found you out! On the side of the house the master bedroom, master bath, and walk in closet are four vents like this. Three of them are bathroom exhaust vents (which explains some odors on that side of the house from time to time) and one is the dryer vent (stupidest design brainfart having the dryer vent go UP). On the extension ladder I went to each of the vents while my wife went inside to flip the switches on in each of the three bathrooms so I could figure out where this went. The dryer was running so that one was easy. The only one that didn't have any air coming out was the master bath vent.
The chess game with Mr. Squirrel is heating up. I feel a checkmate coming! I go to Home Depot to see if there is some kind of pest guard that is a little more stout than the limp plastic thing that came with the vent. I look for metal guards and I find out they don't make them out of metal The only thing I can find are...wait for it....harder PLASTIC pest guards. I go ahead and buy four figuring that surely the harder plastic is effective, they know what they're doing. Boom...they're up.
Simultaneously I get a live trap designed for squirrels and put in in the attic above the garage, which is now his only means of escape. I'll either trap the a$$hole or he'll bypass it for the garage door route. I feel good. I've conquered the fuzzy tailed menace. To spice up the game a little and hopefully scare him out of the garage exit, I sought Google help to determine what predator (besides me) kills squirrels. Owls. A YouTube search lands me some audio of owl noises. My wife had serious questions when she came into the master bath toilet room and sees me standing with my phone inches away from the exhaust vent with owl noises coming from my phone. Seriously better than most sounds she hears coming from that room. It has been a Spackleresque quest. Checkmate sucka!
Well hell. Another damned design genius screws me over. While I was cursing the squirrel under my breath again, I remembered that somewhere I had some rabbit hutch wire left over from a project I had done for my wife. I'd just cut some of that out and cover the bottom of the cheap ass 'pest guard'
At this point I'm beside myself. I'm no longer cussing the jerk under my breath. The neighbors are hearing me. Somehow he was able to chew through the side of the guard, around the mesh, bent it down. I'm pretty sure he had a doorman at this point. "Come in Mr. Bucky. Have a good day!"
Now it's either going to either be me camping out with my 9mm Sig and .40 cal Walther with 4 magazines in a lawn chair below yelling in my best Clint Eastwood voice "Get off my lawn!!!!", or I'm going to have to try something else. By this time my wife is laughing, my kids are laughing, my friends to whom I tell the story are laughing, Mr. Squirrel is laughing. Everyone is laughing but me. I'm PISSED! It's time to go full blown Carl Spackler on this buck-toothed jackwagon. I told my wife that the next thing the neighbors could see are flames shooting out from every eve around the house from the explosion. He's going down one way or another.
I made a new friend at the Sutherland lumber down the road from us in Bixby. The employee sees me wondering around their store mumbling to myself, cursing under my breath, hearing me say something about roasted squirrel or something. The rage had me in a strange place. I get you Carl...I really do. I told him the Reader's Digest condensed version of the story and he and I are spitballing ideas and feeding off of each other trying to figure out what could make it happen. He showed me some gutter guards. Yeeeees!! Metal! I'll ditch those piece of crap worthless plastic pest chew toys and I could cut out a piece large enough to cover the hole and laugh my ass off at the squirrel as he breaks his teeth off trying to chew through it. Genius, huh??
Of course I'd have to find a way to keep rain from getting in, but for now I just wanted to keep Bucky out. He has a chess game of his own going on, however.
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