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I live in a 93 year old house. When I tell people that, they invariably say, “How charming.” And they’d be right if it weren’t for the squirrels.

There’s a gang of terribly alert rodents living in our roof and there are only so many options in terms of dealing with them. For the most part, they don’t bother us and we don’t bother them. But it still makes me angry when I see one of those furry little tails disappear under the eaves troughs which I know is the squirrel equivalent of a middle finger. The won’t negotiate. They don’t pay rent. They don’t’ allow us to use the chimney without fear of charred squirrel…Short of blowing the roof off, there aren’t a lot of ways to get rid of them. (People suggest we block the holes, but they’re not cooperating when we yell, “Okay, everybody out!” They just do that tail thing.)

Having said that though, roof ejection is something I have seriously considered. Not just because of the squirrels, but because our house is 93 years old. It needs a new roof! In fact it needs a new everything.

I approach renos with abject terror. They involve no small degree of mess and I don’t like mess. It makes me nervous when I can’t find things and incessant hammering has always made me run in the other direction. So, the best thing to do, of course, is simply move.

This would be the best thing but for the fact that there’s something to be said for location, location, location. We love our neighbourhood and we’ve had many evenings on the deck where we’ve marveled at our good fortune at finding this place. (Then of course a squirrel runs past us and ruins the entire effect.)

So we started hunting. It’s been depressing. Last week I found a heritage house with which I was fully smitten. Andy said he felt “closed in”. (It’s hard to house-hunt with a man who grew up in an African ranch with a view of the veld! Wildebeasts are unlikely to be wandering past our windows in New Westminster, but drunken patrons of the neighbouring taverns might. ) In any case, we went to look at another house which could best be described as the Ultimate Frat House. Andy loved it. So we both went home disappointed and vaguely irritated with each other.

So the question remains: who will win? Squirrels 1, Us 0.