UP A TREE

by Steven Steinbock

Last week I had some dental surgery. As a followup I was given a prescription for a pain killer. I usually am fine with ibuprofen (Advil or Motrin) and those non-prescription drugs took care of the pain and swelling until Sunday night when I was feeling extra achy and decided to take one of the Vicodin tablets. I know Vicodin mainly from television as the object of Dr. Gregory House’s addiction. I guess I hadn’t had Vicodin before. I don’t think I’m likely to have it again in the future. I bring this up only to establish my state of mind when I started hearing sounds coming from inside my walls at 2 a.m.

I thought it was the pitter-patter of feet that roused1 me from my numb slumber. At first I thought it was one of the boys getting up to use the bathroom. I fell back into my narcotic haze. I heard it again and shifted my head so I could peer down the hallway, and I fell back asleep in that position. The next time I heard it, I grabbed a flashlight and climbed out of bed to see who it was. Out in the hallway, not a creature was stirring. I returned to bed.

Around 3:30 in the morning I heard it again. And again, with flashlight in hand, feeling like a character from a Carolyn Wells novel, I crept down the hall to find the source of the noise. I stood there, still as a statue. Then I heard it again, this time coming from inside my room.

At this point I began entertaining the possibility that I was hallucinating. I walked back into the room fully prepared to meet a white rabbit or to fall through a looking-glass.

Instead, I heard the sound coming from inside my bathroom. I went in and began checking in the cabinets for intruders. Then I heard it again. It seemed to be coming from outside the bathroom this time. At that moment I accepted two facts: that there was a very real varmint scurrying inside my wall, and that the unpleasant telescoping sensation in my head and limbs was the result of a narcotic hallucination. (I was experiencing, as it were, morphine morphing). I went back to bed and tried to forget about it all.

Squirrels living inside walls is a serious matter, and not a simple one to solve. I was able to confirm that I had a real squirrel and not just a hallucination. I was also able to postulate that the squirrel was able to get in and out, and wasn’t trapped.

Most of the reading I did on squirrel control was pretty extreme. Cut open your wall. Trap or snare the squirrel. Drive him fifteen miles out of town. Let him go. The part I didn’t like is the Cut open your wall part. That wall is custom painted on one side, and marble-tiled on the other.

I read up on sonic pest repellants, little plug-in devices that emit a high frequency noise that is inaudible to dogs, cats, or humans, but that drives insects and rodents running to the hills. Most of what I read said that they were useless, and that even if they did annoy squirrels, the sound waves would be blocked by walls.

But I’d much rather try a twelve dollar experiment and know that if failed than to cut a thousand dollar hole in a wall knowing that I hadn’t tried the easier path first.

So on the morning after three nights of a scurrying uninvited tenant, I bought a set of sonic repellants. I plugged one in on each side of the bathroom wall and waited for night. So far I’ve had two squirrel-free nights. It might be a coincidence, but I’m not complaining. They may come back. I’ll deal with it then.

While all this was going on, I was facing the final stretch of my novel. My characters were just about to enter into the big climactic scene, and I was feeling overwhelmed. I had a general idea of what had to happen, but within that I had a number of choices about locations, methods, and participants. I was also afraid of what I’d do to get my protagonist out of the series of difficult situations once I’ve put him there. And that got me thinking about the squirrel.

What are the lessons to be learned from my squirrel experience? I came up with two. Never chase a squirrel on pain killers – unless it’s the squirrel who’s taking the pain killers.

And . . . You can’t know what works until you’ve tried something. In other words, don’t think about getting your guy down from the tree until you’ve chased him up it and have hurled a few rocks in his direction.2

1. In order to avoid a lengthy grammatical digression, I’m mentioning a word about word-choice here. I had originally typed awakened and awoke in various forms and various conjugations until I gave it up and settled on the less ambiguous roused. It struck me that one of those verbs was transitive, but I couldn’t decide which one. I dug a little and found some prattle about one being an archaic form and more prattle about metaphoric usage (i.e. “awakened feelings”). But it would seem that the transitive/intransitive nature of the verbs for ending sleep are muddled by complex etymologies. I’ll rely on our resident grammar cop to wake me to the truth. [↩]
2. Does anybody know who first came up with the “Chase your protagonist up a tree” analogy? I’ve seen it attributed to Syd Field a few times. But most of the time, people attribute it to that generic “someone.” [↩]