The Owl/Sqirrel Incident

Not too long ago, I was home alone and heard noises in the attic-loud ones. Loud enough for me to call Barry and make him come home from work because I thought for sure we had like a small cougar in the attic and it was going to scratch through the ceiling any second now. (I don't recall why I was home alone or how to make that happen again...) :)

Of course the noise was gone as soon as he got home. We searched the attic for at least an hour and found nothing-not even a sign of life up there. I wasn't relieved, just feeling a little crazy.

A few weeks later, the pest control guy validated my 'noise' as he pointed out a small hole right at the peak of the roof line. We both also took a look in the attic and again no sign of anything. That night Barry & I noticed that two of the vented sides in the small housing for our weather vane had evidently been blown loose in the storm and were slightly pushed in. Ah ha! See, that's where something could be getting in. Either there, or the small hole. Okay, maybe not a cougar, but whatever!

So, Barry set about repairing the weather vane housing. We heard scream from Barry and I asked Parker to go see if he was okay. I was upstairs trying to be patient with my kids as I told them calmly that clean clothes should be put away and not waded up in the corner of their closet or they would be wearing a uniform of my picking everyday with once a month washings or I would have gone to see if Barry had broken something myself. Parker didn't come back (strange, don't you think?), so I had to go see for myself. Barry tells me that he just got attacked by a squirrel, but no bites and he managed to stay on the sad excuse for a ladder that we have so no trips to the emergency room necessary yet. I feined concern while desperately trying to control my laughter as he told about the squirrel leaping on to his head, and then shoulder, and then bouncing around in the 2x2 space that Barry and his drill were squeezed into.

Five minutes later, I hear another yell. This time I decide I should just go check myself the first time (Parker was still nowhere to be found. The kids seemed to have found pretty good hiding places since I was now moving on to my dirty clothing lecture-much like clean clothing, should not be wadded up in the corner of the closet.) This time, it wasn't a squirrel, but a baby or at least smallish breed owl that was in the rafters of the attic just staring at him. I ran to get the camera, but he took off before I got back.

So, I went to bed that night-not exactly happy the we had squirrels and owls in the attic, (Shouldn't we keep the owl to get rid of the squirrels?) but comforted by the fact that I wasn't insane. Okay, well, at least I wasn't hearing things-I mean besides those voices inside my head.

I got another photo opportunity when two days later the owl was on our front porch! Too late to get a picture of him on the ledge of the kitchen window sill, I was still able to capture him on the coach light outside the front door. He was being attacked by birds, isn't that weird? And, now he lives in a dead tree at the side of the creek in our front yard. We can hear him hooting at night sometimes-it's cool! (I am assuming the squirrels left the attic eventually. We tried to trap them, but they never took the bait. Whatever, just keep the rats out...)

He was so mad we woke him up! What a totally evil look we got at first! Great camoflauge-try to find him in this tree!