"Experiencing the Outside on the Inside" - Time Out #179

My wonderful bride, Debbie, continually challenges herself to solve difficult issues around our family homestead.

She prides herself in coming up with "answers" to difficult situations that home ownership constantly presents.

She will NOT take "can't do" for answers to perplexing issues; she WILL find a way to turn a curve ball problem into a straight ball answer!

Let's just take 2 examples of her most recent success stories, and you, readers in Our Town and far beyond, will totally understand my feelings!

Example #1--Wasps are certainly some of Mother Nature's more fascinating creatures. They are colorful, fast, and interesting to observe from a distance? All these factors are good, as long as the wasps are outdoors, of course. Well, this past fall, said wasps decided to enter our inside domain, via our chimney. Yes, they began invading our home, and didn't seem to care much that we did NOT want them to be part of our extended family. We possibly could have accepted 1 or 2 of the winged insects, but at times, their inside numbers were in double digits! That, my friend, is absolutely not o.k.; agree?

Their constant activity inside our home also bothered our 4-legged family folks, Spanky, our male fawn French Bulldog, and Tux, our male black pug. No stinging happened, but maybe all of us just got lucky?

So, what to do with the immediate threat of these unwanted invaders? After some deep thought, Ms. Debbie came up with another winning idea for the short term. She used an extension piece of her powerful home vacuum, and merely vacuumed them up. She disposed of them later under safe conditions. Her solution worked, of course, temporarily. She then called a pest control company, only to be told our job was too big for them to manage. In the longer term, Oklahoma's freezing weather has placed an outdoor halt on the wasp activity, thus far. The rest of the story will, hopefully, soon be addressed by a chimney sweep person to see if he/she has any magical ideas to eliminate the wasps' nests?

Example #2----My bride and I recently returned from week-long trip, flying back to Our Town's wonderful airport. Tired, we went to bed quickly after coming through our front door. First, however, I noticed some items moved around in my study; clearly something moved them away from where they originally were positioned. I asked my bride about it; she denied moving them, so we went to bed. Well, when I got up the following morning, my lady was gone to pick up Mr.'s Spanky and Tux from the kennel. Before leaving our home, she opened 3 outside doors on a very cold day. As soon as I was up, I reluctantly closed the doors, but knew something was not all right. It was just too cold to leave them open. She arrived home with our little treasures (i.e., dogs), and I think I was as happy to see them as they were to see me! My bride quickly told me, "We have a squirrel inside our home. I saw him!". Those words certainly made me have eyes wide open, needless to say!

For the next hour or so, we saw evidence of the squirrel's presence, with various wooden items chewed, and metal window screens broken via squirrel teeth. As we were sitting in a room, the hidden squirrel decided to make a run for it , and dashed down a hallway into the den. Our dogs thought it was a battery-operated toy, and dashed after the furry creature.

Isolated to the study where he had originally gained access to our home while we away on our trip, the squirrel hid out.

However, once again, came ever-faithful Ms. Debbie to our rescue!

She retrieved our non-injuring animal trap out of our garage, baited it with always-trusty creamy peanut butter, and placed the trap in the study, closing all exit doors.

It wasn't too long until the bushy-tailed intruder took the bait, and was not too happy captured inside the safe metal trap. Debbie soon made the squirrel's wish come true by opening the trap outside, and giving the squirrel its freedom once again.

So, now, the before-mentioned chimney person has to address supplying an outside wire cover for our chimney, after he addresses our wasp problem, too.

Boy, I am super glad Ms. Debbie is on my home team!!!