Adventure Togs ….. and all that

I still love our house. This is our fifth year in our forever home – an eighties build with big, well proportioned rooms set in a woodland garden. The garden is massive and a definite talking point. Everyone loves our garden – kids because it looks like a huge adventure playground and adults because somehow my husband manages to keep it looking low maintenance (ha!). From our early days of this woodland living my husband has had two great fears 1)squirrels getting into the house and 2)falling trees. For four years we remained unscathed, but this year our fears have been realised – one on Christmas Eve and the other the day before our family holiday!

We were waving goodbye to my brother and his family on Christmas Eve morning when their car suddenly stopped on our drive and we could see them staring up at our roof. My sister-in-law got out and ran back to tell us she had just seen one of our furry friends run up the side of the house and disappear into the roof. We went upstairs to listen and sure enough heard him scurrying and scratching above our bedroom ceiling. I reached for the Yellow Pages as my husband panicked, only a few pest control companies mentioned squirrels in their ads and I knew I’d be lucky to find someone on Christmas Eve (Thank God the kids presents were in the garage!). By my third phone call I was begging and thankfully the dear lady on the other end of the phone took pity on me and promised her son would be with us by late afternoon. He arrived, found the hole (apparently squirrels can squeeze themselves through very small spaces) and planted some poison. He assured us that our intruder would eat the squirrel equivalent of a roast dinner and probably go back out the garden before going into a long sleep and that would be the end of things. He would be back on 7th January!

January 7th came, along with the squirrel man. No poison had been eaten, but he had definitely gone, said he. So the hole was blocked and I paid the bill. By 5pm I realised that the squirrel had definitely not gone and even worse the hole had been blocked and he was now "locked" in the attic. We had heard tales of the damage squirrels can do in confined spaces (Did you know that squirrels are the most common cause of house fires? They gnaw their way through electric cables!) and there was so much noise coming from the attic, we all had to stay up my mother’s for the night until the squirrel man came again the next day. He arrived with a gun (help!) – his father told me not to worry, his son was very experienced and would only shoot if be was sure of his aim. Thankfully our friend was in hiding and more poison was planted. He would eat it within 1-2 days.

We all camped downstairs for a week and switched off the electric at the circuit board before bed, then be was found, the culprit, all innocent and bushy tailed. My 2 sons were waiting eagerly at the bottom of the stairs as the pest was carried out by his tail – "Cool" they said in unison!

Our second greatest fear, the one I have had nightmares about happened last Bank Holiday Monday during the gale force winds. We stood in out study window, watching and waiting. It was really scary and it went on for hours. The news said there was a severe weather warning and I didn’t dare start packing for our holiday the next day. The power kept going off as I was trying to print off invoices (panic – so much to do!!), then we noticed that 2 limbs from one of the trees had landed in our neighbours hedge. I tried to find their phone number (no way was I going outside the door), I had visions of their cars being damaged – thank goodness they has gone away for the Bank Holiday. My husband and father (when the wind died down) removed the damage from their garden by sawing for half an hour or more and sigh of relief, no real damage and no-one was hurt!