The squirrel wars
After a fractious week trying to rebuild the roof on our old cabin, there’s no better balm for marital relationships than a common enemy. We have one. The squirrels.
Despite our best efforts to pin chicken wire into the eaves of the old cabin, they have got in already and begun to scatter our fibreglass insulation into the snow.
Our squirrels are not the galumphing grey type that you see in London. They are smaller and soft amber brown, with tufty ears and tails that look like they’ve been sketched by a cartoonist in a few pencil strokes.
They are also the most aggressive, noisy and bothersome creatures I have encountered here. They chant abuse nonstop at each other like little football hooligans.
They get so livid, they wheeze asthmatically between each scream, desperate to suck in enough air to keep up the fight. In the warmer months, they will be up before us squeaking furiously, carry on all day, and still be at it when we go to bed.
I am so over the fact they look “cute” and have bought a .22 rifle specifically to dispatch them.
Luckily, they have never learned to be wary of humans and will sit in a tree, just a few feet away from you, hurling insults. This is their downfall.
We had one coming into the roof of the house, stealing our insulation and gnawing the rafters. One morning as the little bugger was sat on the rail ranting at us through the window, I went out and shot it with an air rifle.
The rifle wasn’t powerful enough and it crawled into the woodpile squealing in pain. Whilst I tried to get another shot, he was killed by a weasel which was a bit of a surprise to both of us. The weasel popped its wee head out, peered at me, and then whipped back to eat his enormous and unexpected breakfast.
The anti-squirrel gun
However, you can’t rely on weasels and I felt guilty about not making an instant kill so we invested nearly $200 in getting a .22 rifle on mail order.
Which was a good move because that night we realised we still had a squirrel intruder.
I dispatched that one with new gun when we got it and all was quiet for a week, until an opportunist neighbour scampered on to the back rail and peered at us through the window.
“That’s not the one I shot, is it?”
“No” said Neil confidently, “it’s smaller.”
“Yup. His days are numbered.”
Neil and I are convinced we know each of our local squirrels, a bit like coppers know the local villains. Truth is, they all look exactly the same and are about the same size. I think it’s a just a measure of how personal this is for us.
The ultimate in squirrel defence
So as well as spending good money on another rifle, we’ve also spent a lot of the past week building more squirrel defence, a cache.
A cache is a little log “cabin” built up on legs to protect food, clothing, furs etc. from bears, rodents and other creatures. They were common in the bush round here and Alaska. Tin wrapped round the legs stops the critters from climbing up.
We had one that had collapsed laying in the yard and so took it apart, labelling each log and built a new 10’ high platform for it. The platform was a mind-bending bastard of a thing to construct, with angled legs on uneven ground, but rebuilding the “cabin” itself was easy. We had to cut a few logs to replace rotten ones but it was like doing the best jigsaw puzzle ever. If the piece don’t fit, just tear it into shape with a chainsaw! We cut the end notches til they fitted and then ran the saw sideways between the logs so they sat down on each other.
By now we are down to our most battered and ancient pieces of tin to make a roof so I’ve spent a very long time patching with tar, though I might have been better making the roof with tar and used the tin as a kitchen sieve.
Each piece had to be brought into the house overnight to warm up as temps dropped 10 degrees between day one and day two of the job, and at -20c, the tar won’t stick.
The perils of middle age
Work has come to halt, currently. The problem with moving to the bush in your forties after a life in the city is your body will never quite adapt. Neil hurt his knee and then his back. So now I have to split all the wood, haul water from the creek and do everything else while Neil recovers. That’s until I break down.
Hopefully Neil will have recovered enough by then to carry on. It’s a depressing spiral that will get worse as we get older. One day we’ll just both be too decrepit to get wood or water and that will be the end of us. At least it will be swift.
Canine genius or cabin fever?
Now either I’m going mad or Homer is very, very smart.
“Bark.” “Bark.” He said, one afternoon. It is very unusual for him to bark, and he does it with a considered precision, as if delivering a very important message.
What he meant was- “our moose ribcage has fallen down in the rack and is on the floor. It made a strange noise and I know this is not how things are meant to be.”
We hung it back up but, over the next couple of days, he kept circling the rack. What’s he trying to tell us now, we thought?
On closer inspection we realised something had got in through the chicken wire, chewed through the meat bag and left tiny teeth marks in our moose quarter. Bloody squirrels! That’ll be one that lives behind the old cabin!
As we were trying to make the chicken wire tighter, the dog kept bothering us. Neil got a bit annoyed and shooed him away.
Homer wandered off, probably thinking, “Oh, they are just too dumb to understand,” as it wasn’t until the following morning I got the message.
We have a bucket with some dead lemmings by the house. (And why not? Brightens up the yard.)
Homer has ignored the bucket until this morning. He looked in the bucket, then trotted back to the meat rack, looked at me, then ran back to the bucket.
“What’s that Homer? It’s not the squirrel, it’s lemmings!”
The heavy front moose shoulder had slipped on its rope and, though still off the ground, maybe it was low enough for the lemmings to jump up and nibble?
“Neil- Homer’s telling us we need to set traps for lemmings in the rack!”
So we have set some traps. This will protect our meat and allow us to decipher whether Homer really is a canine genius, or we’ve gone mad in our isolation with only a husky to relate to. Only time will tell.
A last word on bloody squirrels
I was furious, after all this work and injury building a cache, to see a bloody squirrel skipping across the top. Then I realised we’d left a ladder leaning against it and he was using that to climb up. At least I hope so as that’s easily solved.
And if not, we know exactly which squirrel it is.
Update
Close inspection of prints in the snow has produced another suspect in the meat theft. The weasel. As I said, you can’t rely on them.
Stop press news!
Just before posting this I checked the rack. It is lemmings! Two in the bucket. Homer is a genius dog and we are still sane. Read next week to find out what other interesting things he imparts to us.
Despite our best efforts to pin chicken wire into the eaves of the old cabin, they have got in already and begun to scatter our fibreglass insulation into the snow.
Our squirrels are not the galumphing grey type that you see in London. They are smaller and soft amber brown, with tufty ears and tails that look like they’ve been sketched by a cartoonist in a few pencil strokes.
They are also the most aggressive, noisy and bothersome creatures I have encountered here. They chant abuse nonstop at each other like little football hooligans.
 |
| Squirrels causing trouble at the football |
 |
| "Come and have a go if you think you're hard-" Bang! |
Luckily, they have never learned to be wary of humans and will sit in a tree, just a few feet away from you, hurling insults. This is their downfall.
We had one coming into the roof of the house, stealing our insulation and gnawing the rafters. One morning as the little bugger was sat on the rail ranting at us through the window, I went out and shot it with an air rifle.
The rifle wasn’t powerful enough and it crawled into the woodpile squealing in pain. Whilst I tried to get another shot, he was killed by a weasel which was a bit of a surprise to both of us. The weasel popped its wee head out, peered at me, and then whipped back to eat his enormous and unexpected breakfast.
The anti-squirrel gun
However, you can’t rely on weasels and I felt guilty about not making an instant kill so we invested nearly $200 in getting a .22 rifle on mail order.
Which was a good move because that night we realised we still had a squirrel intruder.
I dispatched that one with new gun when we got it and all was quiet for a week, until an opportunist neighbour scampered on to the back rail and peered at us through the window.
“That’s not the one I shot, is it?”
“No” said Neil confidently, “it’s smaller.”
“Yup. His days are numbered.”
Neil and I are convinced we know each of our local squirrels, a bit like coppers know the local villains. Truth is, they all look exactly the same and are about the same size. I think it’s a just a measure of how personal this is for us.
The ultimate in squirrel defence
So as well as spending good money on another rifle, we’ve also spent a lot of the past week building more squirrel defence, a cache.
We had one that had collapsed laying in the yard and so took it apart, labelling each log and built a new 10’ high platform for it. The platform was a mind-bending bastard of a thing to construct, with angled legs on uneven ground, but rebuilding the “cabin” itself was easy. We had to cut a few logs to replace rotten ones but it was like doing the best jigsaw puzzle ever. If the piece don’t fit, just tear it into shape with a chainsaw! We cut the end notches til they fitted and then ran the saw sideways between the logs so they sat down on each other.
 |
| Roof tin magically restored with tar |
Each piece had to be brought into the house overnight to warm up as temps dropped 10 degrees between day one and day two of the job, and at -20c, the tar won’t stick.
 |
| Getting cold again, more ice on the river |
Work has come to halt, currently. The problem with moving to the bush in your forties after a life in the city is your body will never quite adapt. Neil hurt his knee and then his back. So now I have to split all the wood, haul water from the creek and do everything else while Neil recovers. That’s until I break down.
Hopefully Neil will have recovered enough by then to carry on. It’s a depressing spiral that will get worse as we get older. One day we’ll just both be too decrepit to get wood or water and that will be the end of us. At least it will be swift.
 |
| Almost finished. Waiting for old folk to get better. |
Canine genius or cabin fever?
Now either I’m going mad or Homer is very, very smart.
“Bark.” “Bark.” He said, one afternoon. It is very unusual for him to bark, and he does it with a considered precision, as if delivering a very important message.
What he meant was- “our moose ribcage has fallen down in the rack and is on the floor. It made a strange noise and I know this is not how things are meant to be.”
 |
| Moose ribs. We brought them inside later to defrost and butcher |
On closer inspection we realised something had got in through the chicken wire, chewed through the meat bag and left tiny teeth marks in our moose quarter. Bloody squirrels! That’ll be one that lives behind the old cabin!
As we were trying to make the chicken wire tighter, the dog kept bothering us. Neil got a bit annoyed and shooed him away.
Homer wandered off, probably thinking, “Oh, they are just too dumb to understand,” as it wasn’t until the following morning I got the message.
We have a bucket with some dead lemmings by the house. (And why not? Brightens up the yard.)
Homer has ignored the bucket until this morning. He looked in the bucket, then trotted back to the meat rack, looked at me, then ran back to the bucket.
“What’s that Homer? It’s not the squirrel, it’s lemmings!”
The heavy front moose shoulder had slipped on its rope and, though still off the ground, maybe it was low enough for the lemmings to jump up and nibble?
“Neil- Homer’s telling us we need to set traps for lemmings in the rack!”
So we have set some traps. This will protect our meat and allow us to decipher whether Homer really is a canine genius, or we’ve gone mad in our isolation with only a husky to relate to. Only time will tell.
A last word on bloody squirrels
I was furious, after all this work and injury building a cache, to see a bloody squirrel skipping across the top. Then I realised we’d left a ladder leaning against it and he was using that to climb up. At least I hope so as that’s easily solved.
And if not, we know exactly which squirrel it is.
Update
Close inspection of prints in the snow has produced another suspect in the meat theft. The weasel. As I said, you can’t rely on them.
Stop press news!
Just before posting this I checked the rack. It is lemmings! Two in the bucket. Homer is a genius dog and we are still sane. Read next week to find out what other interesting things he imparts to us.
Can I hire Homer and your 22 for a couple of weeks or so...I found mice in my Berlin house. Love reading your stories, keep going and get better Neil.
ReplyDeleteThanks Uwe and of course you can hire Homer. In the meantime we'll post you the 22 so you can start shooting them. Hope you're on good terms with the neighbours.
ReplyDelete