Intruder Alert!

Normally, I write about things that have happened to me. Although I was not directly involved with this event, apparently it is entirely my fault. According to my husband, if I hadn't moved the dogs to PEI and had instead left them with him in Guelph, this situation could have been prevented.

Although I moved to PEI in February of 2013, my husband remains living and working in Guelph while we wait as patiently as possible for a job opportunity to open up for him on PEI (it's only been 264 days, but who's counting?!). As he works rotating shift work with frequent last-minute shift, we decided that the dogs would be better off with me in PEI because I work regular 8 hour days. Not to mention that we knew the dogs would love living at the beach!

The huz was trying to get some sleep after a long night shift. Sometimes, it can be difficult to sleep during the day due to noise coming from the street, the school next door or from our neighbours. So when he tries to sleep during the day, there can be a lot of background noise which he has learned to tune out. On this day however, after being asleep for about 4 hours, he was disturbed by a noise which sounded different from the usual background noise. This sound appeared to be coming form INSIDE the house. (Sounds like the beginning of a horror movie, doesn't it!)    

He woke, waited and listened .... and heard nothing. He thought perhaps he had just been in a very realistic dream. Just as he rolled over and was about to go back to sleep, he heard the noise again. Perplexed, he sat up in bed, straining his ears to try and figure out where the noise was coming from. He heard the noise again, followed by the jingle of something brushing against his keys which had been left on the kitchen counter. This could mean only one thing, the noise was indeed coming from inside the house! So he jumped out of bed and strode quickly to the kitchen, expecting to find some cracker attempting a B&E (you can blame this rash conclusion on the day job).

Much to his surprise, rather than finding a person in the kitchen, he found a large grey squirrel! The presumptuous squirrel had invited himself into our kitchen by chewing a rather large hole in the screen on the kitchen window. Then, he helped himself to a loaf of bread on the kitchen counter. Rather than ripping the bread bag open as he did to the window screen, the resourceful squirrel managed to take the twist tie off of the opening of the bag and crawl his way inside. He managed to consume 3 slices of bread and was working on his forth before he woke up the occupant of the house!

This stealthy squirrel wan't the least bit pleased by the fact that he now had an audience and therefore, proceeded to have a tantrum. Not only was he vocalizing loudly, but the squirrel began running laps around the kitchen in panic, knocking over dishes in the drying rack, boxes of cereal that were perched on top of the fridge, and scattering apples from a bowl on the counter top. The huz tried to escort the squirrel to the side door, failing miserably. The squirrel opted instead for running back into the house, into the living room and began climbing the walls. Finally, after multiple attempts at herding the squirrel, the huz trapped him in the front porch where the secret squirrel was able to escape to the outside world without further incident.

The huz however, was not impressed as he now had to throw out the bread, clean up all the items which had been knocked over, and fix the hole in the window screen. How is this my fault? I was wondering the same thing. Apparently, if the dogs had remained in Guelph, the squirrel would not have ventured into the house. (Because our Labrador Retrievers are such good guard dogs!) Since I have the dogs with me in PEI, it's my fault that the squirrel got in and caused such a mess! I certainly had a good chuckle upon hearing the story, but I feel that blaming my present geographic location for this mess is very much "Man Logic". As I see it, even if the dogs had been in the house, the squirrel may still have thought that the loaf of bread was too appetizing to pass up. And if the secret squirrel had gained access to the house, the dogs may have caused an even bigger mess trying to chase it around. I guess we will never know.