As I was getting ready for work I heard a strangely loud scraping noise from our office. I thought it was the oil company filling up our heating oil tank, but there was no truck out front. The noise kept coming back every few minutes, so as I left, I walked around the outside to try and figure out what the noise was.
The scraping/scratching noise got increasingly frantic as I approached the corner of the house. Something was stuck inside the downspout of our gutter system. Either a squirrel or a big rat. It had fallen down all the way to the bottom and was trying to climb out. There, fortunately, was an easy solution to the problem - just unhook the bottom of the downspout and shake out the critter. Unfortunately, the freezing weather and fall leaves had resulted in the bottom foot of the downspout being filled with a solid block of ice and leaves. I couldn't knock it out and I didn't have the time to bring out rounds of boiling water to melt it.
The high for the day was to be over 50, so I figured I would come home and the ice would be soft enough to knock out. The furry creature could last the day.
Wrong.
I kicked out the ice and then out came a squirrel popsicle. I guess hypothermia set in.
Bad house! No killing!
RIP, stupid squirrel.
3 comments:
I take no responsibility for the emotionally disturbing blog post and accompanying photo.
A moment of silence for the poor deceased critter, please.
~J
Wow, now I know why I have gutter guards. I thought it was for the leaves.
Did you try to thaw him out?
I'll have to find a gadget to prevent this one from happening again.
Signed
The Gadget Queen
We actually do have gutter screens--the little guy obviously wanted to get in because he would have had to slide under the screens to get to the hole. Maybe he wasn't right in the head.
We tried to thaw him out. I made D wait a day (when it was around 50 degrees) before he tied him into a little bag because I didn't want to accidentally "bury" him alive in our trash can. No luck, that guy was dead.
~J
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