12:19pm December 18, 2003 ~ stupid squirrel
We had the world's stupidest squirrel stuck in one of our downspouts this morning. Morgan heard it in there as she was leaving the house. I pulled off the extension and bottom elbow, and exposed the squirrel's tail hanging out of the end of the downspout. I tapped near its tail and it twitched a little. At that point I thought the squirrel was near dead. I left it alone for a while, and when I checked on it later its tail was still hanging out. I noticed the opening of the downspout was pinched in a little so I pried it open wider. When I did that the squirrel freaked out and started scrambling up the downspout. It sounded like it had a lot more energy than I had first assumed, so I backed off and watched. It kept sliding down to the end of the downspout. At one point most of its body was hanging out, but it kept scampering back up and sliding back down, resting with its tail and butt hanging out. All it had to do was let go and it would drop right out. I got a hose and trickled some water down the gutter, but that just freaked it out more instead of encouraging it to let go. So I just started talking to it, trying to calm it down, and then it finally fell out and scampered away. At least it got me to clean the downspout -- the bottom elbow was completely clogged with dirt and roots and crud.
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