I cannot express the importance of knowing exactly how many squirrels you are keeping in one cage. Count them, keep a tally on the side.
I came in last night to an apparent jail break. All the squirrels who were about to be moved outside soon, chose freedom over oppression. There may have been weapons and power tools involved, but I was not witness to that part of the crime.
All I know is I came into the studio to an open cage door and only shavings piled to resemble slumbering squirrels under the blankets. I had been duped.
Luckily, squirrels being the arrogant and despicable characters they are, they could not be quiet in their obvious distain of the “Man”. I could hear half muffled snickers, out and out “raspberries” blown and foul mouthed insults, from every corner of the room. That sure makes them easy to track down.
I briefly considered letting the cat in to see how many she could secure, but she’s more interested in finding true love than squirrel meat. So I got to work with the net that I keep handy on my desk.
After I had reclaimed and securely restrained 13 squirrels, I wiped the sweat from my brow, the blood from the back of my neck and poured myself a drink. As a precaution, I added 4 alligator clips and a padlock to the cage door. All was well.
Until this morning.
I sat down with my peanut butter toast and coffee and turned on the computer. The keyboard was wet and missing the #3 key. I heard a sly growl and a brazen black squirrel walked across my toast and proceeded to wash his hands in my coffee.
Son of a gun. I must have had 14 in that cell block.
I corralled him when he fell in the turtle tank (not the brightest squirrel in the batch) and once I got him dry, I decided to move them all outdoors to the big pen.
Getting it ready involved multiple trips to the house, a lost screwdriver bit and some pretty creative language on my part. When it was ready, I carried the squirrels out, one by one (of course the inside cage wouldn’t fit through the door when full of fat squirrels) out to the pen and tossed them in. 14, count them 14 trips. I counted twice.
By the time all was said and done and my fingers were stiff with band aids,, my toast had been stolen by the dog, there were two gnats in my coagulating coffee and I was beat. I made fresh coffee and here I am now, finally at the computer.
Wait….was that squirrel poop on my desk before? I hear snickers.
Always and I mean ALWAYS count your squirrels.