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Thanks to Way down here, I was able to find a video of the Yip-Yips as well as a few fascinating links about them, including this Wikipedia entry.

On a bad day, talking like a Yip-Yip still has the power to make me happy. Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Warning: People who work from home, have no children and are in a steady relationship may find excitement in the weirdest of events. Please skip this post if the place where wildlife meets the suburbs bores you or scares you.

It started a couple of months ago with a call from our next door neighbor: « There’s a squirrel over your window and he’s eating your roof! » I went outside to have a look. It was actually two squirrels, hanging out on the small ledge over the bathroom window, chewing intently at the cedar shingles. I had seen occasional squirrels take little bites off the shingles and didn’t think much of it. But these two guys were really going at it, ruining an entire layer of shingles.

Who did I turn to? The Web, of course. Some people suggested cayenne pepper as a deterrent for squirrels so I thought I’d give that a try.

The problem is, that window is on the second floor and it’s out of reach of even our tallest ladder. I made a mixture of water, soap and hot sauce and put it in a squirt bottle. I then leaned dangerously over the window ledge and squirted some of the hot sauce on the shingles. The bright sun on that day was melting the snow all around and steam came out of the shingles when the hot sauce reached it. Cool, I thought. Let’s see if it works.

Maybe these were Mexican squirrels: they left for the day then they came back with a vengeance, eating away at the hot-sauced shingles. Damn.

I turned to the Web again and read that mothballs can work, at least for a short period of time. I grabbed an old pair of stockings and put mothballs in. Blork balanced himself on the window shelf (no way I was going to try that again, with the squirrels laughing at me) and put the mothball bags over the window.

No signs of squirrels for a while. We thought they had moved to a friendlier place until we woke up one morning and found this.

Not good. Not good at all.

I called an exterminator and asked for advice. He said the squirrels feel the warmth from the house and want to come inside. They’ll chew and chew until they manage to make their way in the attic. He said mothballs don’t really work. We needed to trap the squirrels and relocate them before they got inside.

We slept on the decision for one more night and in the morning, we found this.

Okay. War it was then.

The exterminator – a gentle man with a large mustache who claims to like squirrels and even feeds them around his house – came to install a cage on the balcony where the squirrels were doing the most damage. He put a bunch of almonds in the cage (their favorite, he claimed) and told us that we would probably have a squirrel in there in the morning.

There was no squirrel in the cage in the morning. Instead, the buggers were building a large nest in one of our maple trees. They must have known cold weather was coming because they were really going at it, destroying the neighbors’ hedge to get branches and pack them into a nice shelter in the tree. I didn’t care about the hedge but I knew that soon, they’d be back chewing at our house. It was a clear pattern that was established and I knew I needed to do something before that smart couple reproduced.

I moved the cage at the foot of the tree, put more nuts inside and waited. The cold weather came and for a couple of days there were no signs of the squirrels. I spread a slice of 12 grain bread with organic, fair-trade almond butter (my favorite), put the bread in the cage and waited. Still nothing.

Finally, the sun came out and the weather got a little bit warmer. As I was sitting in the kitchen having lunch yesterday, I saw both squirrels running around the cage, getting curious about the nuts inside. Excited, I called Blork at work and told him all about what I was seeing: One of them is climbing on the cage! He’s looking down at the nuts! Wait! He’s going in! No… He just walked around. Damn… Wait! His head is in! Oh my god! He’s lifting the cage! He’s putting his nose between the bars and he’s throwing the cage of its side! The nuts have come out! He’s eating them! Arrrggh!

After 15 minutes of that play-by-play description, Blork had to get back to work. The Mini, who was mad because he was being kept in the house so he wouldn’t get trapped in the cage, had eaten my lunch while I had been on the phone. Things were not going well.

I went outside, put some heavy bricks over the cage so that the squirrels couldn’t move it, put more nuts back in and decided to get back to my work.

When I looked out the window two hours later, all the nuts were gone and the cage door was wide open. Someone was having a good time at my expense.

The mustached exterminator man came back to fix the cage and promised me that I would soon witness a capture.

It happened this morning, as I had given up any hope and was marveling at the power of a tiny squirrel brain. I was walking by the backyard window when I noticed that both squirrels were hanging out around the cage. The boldest one (probably the male) put its head in the cage. « No way », I thought. « It’s actually going to happen right before my eyes? » He quickly stepped in to reach the nuts at the end of the cage and click, the door closed behind him. Somewhat anti-climactic, I have to admit.

I called Blork who told me to run outside to take pictures, which I did. Then I called the exterminator so he would come and release the squirrel away from here (we never intended to kill him). He told me he couldn’t come today but he would send his daughter. He said to carry my phone with me if I went outside because his daughter is a bit silly (he actually said « nounoune ») and he said she’d probably get lost and have to call me again for directions.

She did get lost and called. (She was at the corner of my street.) I told her to continue down the street and waited for her to arrive. It took her a long 15 minutes to show up. She came out of the car, dressed in super high heel boots, with no jacket and no gloves on even though it was freezing outside. I think the squirrel was bigger than her and I feared he would eat her. She promised to release him at least 5 miles from our house (they can find their way back to their territory) and bring back the cage so we could catch his mate (and release her in the same area).

She said that when she opened the cage, the squirrel stormed out, fell off a small cliff, got up again and started running away. You cannot help but marvel at the resilience of those little shingle eaters.

If you drive on the 132 around Boucherville today and you see a weird looking hitchhiker with a big fluffy tail asking to be dropped off near Longueuil, please don’t pick him up. Thank you.

� chaque rencontre mensuelle des blogueurs montr�alais, un genre de liste des pr�sences circule entre les participants, question de se rappeler qui �tait l�. Pour rendre la chose plus int�ressante, quelqu’un (Andr�, je crois) a eu l’id�e de poser une question aux blogueurs � chacune des rencontres.

J’en parle parce que la question d’hier soir avait � voir avec le cin�ma:

Quel est votre film pr�f�r� qui se d�roule � Montr�al OU qui a �t� tourn� � Montr�al?

Les r�ponses sont ici.