Light Saber Battle with Squirrel

I stepped outside today to put the trash by the curb, and was startled by some movement in the bushes by our house.  It was a squirrel.  A cute, fuzzy little squirrel with a black body and red feet.  Awwww, how sweet, I thought as I watched it scamper and cavort innocently across my carport.

Then, as I turned to go back in my house, I saw this cute little furry creature headed straight for my open front door.  “No!”  I cried.  “No, you unmentionable little rodent, keep your filthy self out of my house!”

But this was a Costa Rican squirrel; it didn’t speak English.  It ran inside.  And a black cloud obscured my vision as I imagined the infinite number of horrible things a terrified squirrel could do to the government-issued furniture I would be responsible for paying for if it felt trapped in my house.  I recovered just in time to watch it disappear into the partly-open coat closet by the front door.

“Ah ha!  I’ve got you now,” I chuckled, rubbing my hands together in glee.  And I closed the door to the closet.  Then my four year old and I set about constructing a barricade:  a large box, a large basket, a rolled up carpet holding everything together for good measure.  And Benjamin standing behind all this waving his hands, making noise like only a four year old can, and doing everything possible to look terrifying to a squirrel.  There was only one place for this rodent of questionable parentage to go:  out.  I was sure.

I was wrong.  Rather than head for the vast, wide-open spaces of the great outdoors, just a few tantalizing feet away to the right through my still-open front door, it turned left, squeezed through an invisible and microscopic hole, ran between Benjamin’s feet, and into the guest bathroom.  Good thing we didn’t have any guests.

I picked up a light saber lying conveniently nearby and tried a little Skywalker action on the rodent.  He was unimpressed, and continued to skulk in the dark recesses of my bathroom underneath the sink.  I’m guessing if I can’t look threatening to a tiny mammal, I have zero future guarding and defending the galaxy as a Jedi knight.

And then I came to my senses and I was glad I was not a Jedi:  the bathroom door opens at the foot of the stairs.  Were our visitor to actually run out of the bathroom, his track record indicated he’d head straight upstairs.  I put the light saber away.

I considered building a second containment barricade, but Benjamin was showing a decided interest in staying as far from our furry visitor as possible.  I couldn’t count on him to be scary again.  And besides, look how well our first attempt had worked.  We’re just not scary enough for squirrels.

And once again, visions of a terrified rodent loose in my house rose before my eyes.  And this time, in the background, I could hear the Administrative Counselor intoning, “You are a dependent spouse, not an animal control specialist.  Why didn’t you call the Embassy in the first place?”  As he hands me a bill for $3,000 to repair the furniture and the holes the workmen have had to knock in the wall to evict the squirrel.

I locked the squirrel in the bathroom.

So whom, exactly, does one call to remove a squirrel from government quarters?  Not my husband, who had thoughtlessly left for lunch just moments before I phoned.  Not the Office of Defense Cooperation, which was the first wrong number I got.  Not the Housing Coordinator, which was the next wrong number I got – although she and I did have a very nice chat anyway.  On my fourth try I found Maintenance, who sent a lovely young man over with a stick and a blanket to battle our fierce little visitor. 

Now that an official Embassy representative was present, I didn’t mind a bit if the squirrel decided to take off upstairs.  So when the nice young man suggested I could scare the squirrel out with a stick while he captured it in a blanket, I just smiled serenely, completely unaffected by the sheer madness of the plan.  I even thought of suggesting I could use the light saber instead – it was a bit longer.  I still had visions of a squirrel burrowing into my mattress.  But now, the Embassy would foot the bill.  Ha ha.  Burrow, you furry little rodent!  Go ahead and burrow!!

Of course, as soon as the nice young man opened the bathroom door, the squirrel scooted right out the front door at near light speed.  I heard the little sonic boom as it passed me. 

And the young man and I smiled and laughed, and in his eyes I could read “silly female” as he looked at me, and in my eyes he should have read “If anything went wrong it would have been your fault!”