Uninvited Guests

A squirrel escape hatch.

One of the (mostly) cool things about owning our own place is that it comes with an entire slew of animals. I can't say much that is pleasant about the roly-poly bugs that are currently amassing what appears to be an extended family reunion inside our house. Nor can I comment in a positive way about the little grayish-white chameleon spiders that seem to find my perfectly white corners of the ceiling the desired country for homesteading.
But we have some exquisite (I might be exaggerating that a little) birds on the property that I've noticed. There is this great woodpecker I will tell you about later on. And from the looks of the back yard we have a very healthy mole population as well. And we have lots of squirrels too. I think they are all (the squirrels I mean) pretty great except for the one that managed to get him/herself stuck up in the eave of our house. I was down at the house by myself the other day and I thought someone was breaking in upstairs. It turns out that was true. But it wasn't a person. It was a super cute, fluffy little (well, kind of big-sh actually) squirrel doing sprints up in our crawl space. Son of a triscuit! So our current theory is that he/she.....OK that is going to get tiring. Lets pretend the squirrel is a he. So my theory is that he got stuck in there, but can't get down. So Dad and I hoisted up the extension ladder, to the opening in the eave, and we are hoping that he will then be able to climb down and move out. If he doesn't, then we are going to have to resort to extraordinary measures. In my imagination these involve a cat, a very loud stereo, and an air compressor. For his sake, I hope he leaves soon....
This afternoon we were also surprised to have two very healthy and beautiful geese stop by the place. All we had to offer was a yard full of dandelions, but that seemed to be just what they were interested in. Lucky us! They didn't seem too afraid, and so I was able to get close. They were definitely a couple. They both looked like dudes to me, but I'm no expert or nor am I homophobic, so they are most certainly welcome back anytime. Especially if they eat dandelions.
Other than that we had a cute little grey field mouse who had an unfortunate run in with a garage door. That made me sad. He was in full rigor mortis by the time we found him, so when Eduardo picked him up by the tail he was stiff as a board. As a side note, Eduardo is particularly adept at heaving small afore mentioned animals great distances. I think he tossed the little guy a solid 40 feet at least, and he might have had a nice spiral on him if I'm not mistaken.
Anyway, I am pretty much loving all the animal-ness that is going on around the house (note that I did not say "in" it). I am beginning to feel a real sense of community with the living things that will soon be my neighbors:)

P.S. Please don't judge me if in two months I've declared all out war with any of these guys. I already hate insects, so it's not implausible that in six to eight weeks I could be feeling very differently than I do now. But why start out with negativity right? They are innocent until proven guilty. let's just start with that and see where it takes us.

Frank and Carl

Or maybe Francene and Carl?

Or Frank and Carlita?...I'm not sure