Squirrels are malaria ridden, tuberculois carrying, flea infested, SARS infected rodents.

You want to find out for sure they are rodents? Check your homeowner’s insurance poolicy. Specifically excluded will be “damaged caused to your double wide caused by rodents. Rodents include squirrels… blah, blah, blah.

The coolest home we ever owned was a 3500 square foot log home. Everybody in town called it the log cabin, but that brings to mind Abe and the Blue Ox or Babe and Martha.

It was the homiest place. The downstairs was one gigantic room with a wet bar, dining area, and fireplace, with a beautiful staircase dividing the room. All the bedrooms were upstairs.

Anyway, the cool thing was that since it was natural logs with all their flaws, it was no big deal to drive a small nail into the log to hang holiday decorations. My wife really went all out at holidays, but especially Kwanza. She would tap, tap, tap those little nails whereever she wanted, and later when I undecorated, I just pulled the little nail out and the little hole just dissappeared into the naturalness.

I got a job elsewhere, so we moved. We put the house on the market, packed and left town.

You got it. Somehow one squirrel (see description above) got into the house probably down the chimney.

Did I mention that squirrels have to be the dumbest animal on the planet to leave the great outdoors to go into and empty house?

Real estate agent calls one day and says the windows on the inside of the house have been chewed up. My reaction was something on the order of — dead silence —.

She continued, we found a dead squirrel and it looks like it tried to chew its way out. There is a lot of damage to the sills and panes.

After gathering my senses and getting more details, I took a deep breath and ended the call and read my homeowner’s insurance policy.

You know the rest of the story.

So just like pigeons are to city people, and gulls are to beach dwellers, squirrels are our ENEMY.