There are certain moments in life when you realize that you are completely unprepared for what is happening in your own house.
This was one of those moments.
It started out as a completely normal evening.
I came home, and my husband was upstairs ripping out the carpet in the hallway. We live in a tri-level, so one of the nice things about our house is that it is really easy to keep track of where everyone is.
My husband was upstairs.
My son was downstairs in the dining room eating snacks.
Don’t judge me and my son’s life choices. He was hungry. He needed snacks. This is not the part of the story we are here to discuss.
I had just given Finn, our dog, his ice cream treat, so he wandered off toward the fireplace.
Everything was normal.
Until Finn started whining.
At first, I thought he wanted another treat.
I mean, I had just given him one.
I basically told him, “Dude. You just got ice cream.”
But Finn wasn’t looking at his empty ice cream cup.
He was looking at the fireplace.
And that’s when I thought:
Oh, God. What is in there?
Then I heard it.
Scratching.
Something was actually in the fireplace.
My son heard it, too.
We immediately yelled for his dad.
“There is something in the fireplace!”
And this is where my brain decided to skip approximately seventeen reasonable steps and go straight to disaster.
Because obviously, once we opened that fireplace door, whatever was in there was going to come flying out at us.
I would panic.
I would start swatting at the floor with absolutely no direction or purpose.
I would probably hit my husband with whatever object happened to be in my hand.
The dog would start barking.
Then he would chase the poor terrified creature around the house.
The creature would run around even more because now it was being chased by a barking dog and three screaming humans.
Finn would probably bite it.
Then we’d have to go to the vet to check for rabies.
My husband would have a concussion because I had accidentally hit him in the head with a broom handle.
We’d have to call professionals.
Someone would probably ask why we didn’t just open the door.
And honestly, I don’t know.
So I did what any sensible woman would do.
I went into the garage and found an empty box.
Because obviously, if a critter was going to come flying out of the fireplace, the most logical thing was to provide it with a box.
I also informed my husband that I should probably not be standing anywhere near him when he opened the fireplace door because I didn’t think that was going to bode well for either of us.
We were prepared.
Finn got another treat so he would go upstairs to the bedroom.
The box was ready for the critter to jump into instead of onto one of us.
My husband put on gloves.
We were ready.
He opened the fireplace door.
Nothing came out.
Instead, whatever was in there went higher up into the flue.
My husband closed the door and started jiggling the flue opener back and forth.
And then—
DROP.
The critter fell.
Into our fireplace.
Inside our house.
Our son, right on cue, asked:
“Where is it now?”
My husband said, “Well, it’s in our house now!”
Fantastic.
Our son then asked the question we were all wondering.
“What is it?”
My husband looked at it and said:
“It’s a squirrel.”
THANK GOD.
It’s a squirrel.
Not a raccoon.
Not a possum.
Not some unidentified creature from the depths of the fireplace that would eventually require an exterminator, a priest, and possibly a new house.
It’s a squirrel.
And because apparently we needed to make this situation even more personal, my husband decided to name him.
Mr. Squirrel.
I don’t know where that came from.
I don’t know why he needed a name.
But apparently, once you have a squirrel inside your house, you become the kind of family that names the squirrel.
So now we had Mr. Squirrel.
My husband tried to coax Mr. Squirrel into the box.
Mr. Squirrel was not interested.
He was scared.
He had just fallen out of a fireplace into a strange house filled with humans and a dog who had been relocated upstairs.
I can’t really blame him.
So Mr. Squirrel decided he had other plans.
He left the fireplace.
And that’s when things got interesting.
Because now there was an actual squirrel running around our house.
Mr. Squirrel, excuse me.
It looked like a pinball machine to me.
You know when you’ve been holding that little lever forever and then finally let it go and the pinball shoots around the machine at approximately the speed of light?
That was Mr. Squirrel.
He was zooming around our house with absolutely no idea where he was going.
At one point, he sprinted directly toward me.
I screamed.
Like, really screamed.
I told my son to get out of Mr. Squirrel’s path.
That obviously worked about as well as everything else we had planned.
So we moved on to Plan B.
Or C.
Or D.
Honestly, we were running out of letters.
We opened the front door.
Except we have a screen door.
Because of course we do.
Mr. Squirrel could see the way out, but he couldn’t actually get out.
So onto the next plan.
We opened the garage door.
Which was near me.
So there I was, holding the door open and using it as a shield between myself and a squirrel approximately the size of a baked potato.
I don’t know what I thought the door was going to do if Mr. Squirrel decided to come after me.
But apparently I felt safer behind it.
Meanwhile, my husband was trying to reason with him.
“Come on, Mr. Squirrel. We know you’re scared. That’s not the way out.”
Sir.
Mr. Squirrel is a squirrel.
I don’t think he understands the concept of following directions.
Every time Mr. Squirrel came anywhere near me, I started screaming again.
At this point, our neighbors probably thought I was practicing for an opera audition.
I was not.
I was being pursued by Mr. Squirrel.
Eventually, Mr. Squirrel apparently decided that he had seen enough of our house.
He found the open garage door.
He ran through it.
And off into the night he went.
And just like that, it was over.
Mr. Squirrel was free.
Our house was squirrel-free.
Everyone survived.
No one was bitten.
No one needed stitches.
My husband did not suffer a concussion from an errant broom handle.
The dog did not get to chase a squirrel around the house.
And I did not have to explain to an emergency veterinarian why I was standing there holding a squirrel-shaped box.
So what did we learn from this experience?
That sometimes Plans A, B, C, D, E, F, and G aren’t enough.
Especially when your unexpected houseguest is a terrified squirrel who has just dropped down your fireplace and decided to explore the entire house at approximately 900 miles per hour.
Also, apparently, if a squirrel drops into your fireplace, you should have an empty box nearby.
I don’t know if that’s an actual wildlife recommendation.
But it felt right at the time.
The only other thing I know for sure is that our dinner was late that night.
Because apparently Mr. Squirrel had plans, too.
