Squirrel this and squirrel that...

As long as I can remember living in this building (over 10 years at this point) there has always been some critter or another making it's way into the unfinished third floor. Most of those times the critters have been squirrels. Although the time when The Oldest was still a baby, barely a toddler, we had a kestrel that had gotten in, while chasing another blackish bird (that I don't feel like looking up the name for).

The squirrels have gotten bad, especially in say the last year. I've told the landlord (Dirty's step-mom) in the past and she's kind of glazed over it with a, "I always had problems with animals getting up there, but for me it was the pigeons." Okay, well as our landlord, how shall we all move forward and get rid of these stinking squirrels. We tried poisoning them. Then we learned that when you do that, the sick and dying squirrels go out and get eaten by predator birds, like the kestrel or even more exciting a red-tailed hawk, and then the predator dies. I like kestrels and red-tailed hawks. They are awesome! AND they eat squirrels! Not enough of them in my opinion or else we wouldn't have the current infestation in our third floor. Where was I? Oh, yeah we poisoned the squirrels. They disappeared for a bit. They are now back. Their numbers are growing.

They are branching out to the crawlspace at the back of the building, which is where, I might add, we've had squirrels fall through a space in the wall, to the basement where they scare the living bejeezus out of us and the poor, older lady who lives downstairs. She's scared of our cats and they're domesticated. Imagine how she feels about the nasty squirrels. Their scratchings are starting to sound like it's right up against the plaster boards...THAT ARE OUR CEILINGS!!! The cats are quite eager to find out what they can hear scratching our ceiling. I don't want the filthy squirrels near my lovely cats. I've contacted some critter removal companies and hope to hear back in the next day or so with ranges of price quotes. I haven't really been anxious all winter break, but with school assignments already starting and dang squirrels trying to get into our apartment, the anxiety is starting to build. I may be just a bit dramatic since I watched the Hoarders last night where the guy had well over 2000 rats in his house that were his "little buddies." He said that the rats would pull his hair out for nesting materials (SQUIRRELS MAKE NESTS TOO!!! AND WE HAVE LOTS OF HAIR BETWEEN THE SIX OF US!!!) and lick at moist areas of his face (WE HAVE MOIST AREAS ON OUR FACES, TOO!!!)

Okay, I've officially worked myself into a tizzy. This was all going to be a facebook status update. This never would have fit into however many characters they let me update with.