There's a party going on round here...

As most of you may already know, I have been working on fixing up a rental house in Anderson. About 3 weeks ago, I arrived to find tiny foot prints in the spackling dust all over the house. You cannot imagine the bolt of terror that went through me when I saw these little tracks. My imagination had a hideous, huge creature jumping on my head and ripping my eyes out! So I slowly made my way through the house looking behind every door and around every corner. I went down in the basement thinking about those horror movies where people are going into the basement and you're thinking "Don't go down in the basement!" I looked everywhere for an opening that a creature could come into the house. I spotted an open flue that emptied into the massive chimney. I figured the varmint must have come in that way. I stuffed a huge chunk of insulation into the opening! When I got back to the Lincoln building, I googled 'animal tracks' and came up with squirrel. Time went by and no more tracks....until Monday of this week. I arrived at Nichol to find squirrel tracks all through the dust like some kind of wild party had taken place. A trash bucket was turned over. Not only were there tracks on the floor, there were tracks on the step ladder, on the stair rail, tracks on the commode and tracks on the wall where a cord comes into the room from the satelite dish. I think the squirrel was pulling the cord for some reason. I decided to go back to the basement and check the flue opening. Before I went down the steps, I opened the back door to let more light into the stairwell. I heard a chattering outside the door. The squirrel was sitting in a tree making a noise that sounded a lot like laughter. The insulation was missing from the flue opening. Now the flue opening has a flue stopper in place and hopefully the crazy parties have stopped.