OK, I’m a little freaked right now.
About an hour ago, I’m going about my usual business, when I hear a loud clattering and thumping. It takes me a while to identify it — the closet where our water heater lives. I open it to take a peek — aah! A squirrel!
I close the door, so that I can open doors to the outside, close doors to other rooms, and get a broom. I open the closet again. No squirrel.
It looks like the grating on a vent to the outside has fallen in, bringing a squirrel with it. And it looks like the squirrel has managed to fall down into the little space between the corner of the closet and the curve of the water heater, and it’s scrabbling around in there with no success.
I try to throw it a rope, but that just earns me some agitated chittering and growling. I didn’t know squirrels could growl.
I call Animal Control, because I don’t really know what to do about a trapped squirrel behind my water heater, other than that I can’t just leave it there. The nice lady at Animal Control tells me that the thing to do is not to poke at it, because squirrels freak out easily. Instead, I should just leave it be, and call them back in a couple hours if it can’t find its own way out. Meanwhile, the squirrel starts howling. I didn’t know squirrels could howl.
So now I’m holed up in my office, trying to give the squirrel some space to get its head together, which basically traps me in here because the closet is in the main thoroughfare of our house and I can’t go anywhere without walking by it. I’m a little freaked out. I hope it deals with this before I have to go to work, because I don’t know what to do in that case.