Weekend sorrows: the squirrel invasion

By Mariappan Jawaharlal, Wikipedia

Yesterday instead of our clean kitchen, we found a crazy mess. Let me explain.

We had left home only for one hour to do some food shopping and run a few other chores. When we came home loaded with grocery bags, instead of the tidy kitchen we left, we found "a brownie mess".

After the shock, we started to investigate. We had our kitchen window open to the garden, but we had (as always) the window screen on. I used to believe that the window screen was a sufficient barrier to animals. Not anymore.

The window screen in the kitchen was broken through in several places, and it became clear that a small animal must have entered the kitchen, and devoured a few brownies from a batch that I had left to cool down on the kitchen counter. Then obviously the pest became frantic (sugar rush?) and a few pots in the adjacent living room were overturned with the plants and soil strewn on the wooden floor.

The kitchen window, the screen and the window frame were all smeared with chocolate from the crumbled brownies. Of course, we looked through the house for the animal (whatever that was). Nothing. At the end, we decided (hoped) that whatever visited the kitchen exited it through the same path, the kitchen window screen.

The cleaning revealed multiple animal hairs: dark-colored, coarse, approximately two inches long. They were all over our kitchen sink and the toaster (these are right next to the kitchen window).

After bleaching and cleaning obsessively, and looking for the unknown intruder throughout the house, I was able to search the Internet for the problem. Here is what I found from this website:

Make sure you’re not attracting squirrels to the cottage: Move bird feeders away from the building, cut back overhanging branches, and remember that kitchen food smells—especially baking—will encourage them to climb right through open windows. (So don’t leave any pies cooling on the sill, Grandma.)

Now "Grandma" (me) knows better.

I still have to deal with the consequences: throw the toaster (it had animal hair on it, and probably in it), throw the sink sponge, bleach everything around, of course - throw the remaining brownies, and finally, repair the broken screen. Well, it is the weekend, after all, I could add more to my to-do list!

I hope that you have a better weekend!