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Remember the rat who showed up and dug a tunnel to our wood shed. The one whose demise I sadly had to hasten? He’s been gone for quite some time now, but it seems another pesky rodent has taken over his ratty super highway.
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Yes. It’s her. The red bitch we’ve been evicting for the past year and a half.
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It shouldn’t surprise me.
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She’s a resourceful little witch.
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But it does make me wonder how she disposed of the previous tenant’s remains …
😳
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I can’t say this with any certainly, but I’m guessing the demise of our cedar tree was woodchuck related.
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It stood in that corner for almost 20years with no issue and then, wham! It was dead. Upon removal we found this…
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A hole, next to the trunk. And on further examination…
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A hump of dirt with a strategically placed pile of poo. On the other side of the hump?
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Another hole, which meant woodchuck tunnel. I figured they must have destroyed the roots of the tree with their digging, but in actuality the tunnel goes under these other bushes that weren’t affected at all.
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So it’s a mystery, but either way? I’m left with an empty space and a stump.
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Because while my husband loves to cut things down with his chainsaw? He could care less about the mess he leaves behind.
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Neither snow nor rain… nor frigid temperatures will stop the red squirrel from Hell.
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She was scurrying over the roof and across the deck railing…
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Trying to make her way to the seed buffet.
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But this snow was light, fluffy and thick and every time she tried to walk across it?
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She fell through.
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And yes, I laughed my rapidly expanding, thank you Covid 19 ass off.
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But she had the last laugh.
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Because the bitch has learned to tunnel.
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She tunneled for over an hour.
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Back and forth.
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Building an entire red squirrel subway line.
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This doesn’t bode well for my dream of her dying of starvation over the winter.
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Or the safety of our home’s foundation for that matter.
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If I wake up next month with her sitting at the kitchen table nibbling my Krispy Kreme’s? Things are going to get real.
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Our old baby barn/shed has a dirt floor with heavy duty rubber mats on top. Due to numerous woodchuck holes and tunnels, we had to drag all the mats out. That sounded easy enough until I realized each one of them weighed the equivalent of an African elephant…
Seriously.
A pregnant, morbidly obese African elephant carrying a suitcase I packed for an overnight trip.
Did I mention they were all covered in pounds of dirt as well?
So as we’re moving the next to last mat…..
This.
A chipmunk burrow with tiny scraps of paper, plastic and leaves.
Upon further examination…
A maze of tunnels, which I thought was pretty cool, until… it moved.
Do you see the leg?
Yeah.
Not a tunnel.
A nursery…
Which means we had to find the other end of the tunnel and relocate them. Not an easy task.
Five minutes after we found them?
Momma found us.
And she wasn’t happy.
She ran around squawking and chirping and looking for her babies.
After a while I think she found them, because she stopped searching and started stuffing.
Stuffing her little cheek pouches full of all those little scraps of paper….
And scurrying back for more.
Within minutes she’d cleaned up the whole lot.
Watch her cram a dried leaf that’s almost bigger than she is below.
(And please pardon my husband’s cursing. Things were not going well with the rebuild at this point…)
After we wasted time relocating chipmunks, we realized we had to relocate a bird’s nest as well.
So many evictions.
I felt like an evil slumlord.
Back to work…. and things did not go well.
Which was completely the husband’s fault.
He had the crazy idea he could square the building properly (After 40 plus years of Maine frost heaves? Madness!) and changed the original footprint….. which in turn threw everything off kilter.
More good times.
Did I mention he uses tools from the 1950’s picked up at a yard sale or the dump?
This little jewel feels like it weighs 50 lbs.
But he has the original box… and vintage lube.
So it’s special.
P.S. For those of you who pay attention, this post is actually out of sequence. That back wall is gone now. Apparently my blog scheduling has run amok.
River's world..... 