Part 3: Insulation

We weren't sure how to proceed. My wife's idea seemed to be that someone would have to get up on a ladder with some sort of power saw and cut his way in, wearing protective headgear -- maybe a bicycle helmet -- to protect himself from toenails when panicked squirrels came racing out. (She is by nature a worrier, and a planner for worst cases, although you might not guess that from the osprey story.) I was imagining something a little different, a hammer instead of a saw, prying things apart with the claw, but it was still going to be violence to the house and it was not very clear in my mind. We were both daunted. In the end she asked for help from a friend (a different one) who also knows something about houses. He took one look and pointed out the right way to get in there. There were several clearly visible screw heads; undo them and the front panel would come right off. Duh.

This friend then got up on a stepladder, took the panel off, pulled out armfuls of vegetable matter that the squirrels had been using for insulation -- he filled a fairly large trash barrel -- and closed it up again. He was pretty sure there were no squirrels in there. He nailed a piece of scrap wood into place to close up the chink between panel and stucco that they had been using to get in and out. We thanked him and he went away.

Within an hour or so, squirrels had chewed through that thin piece of wood and were busily reinsulating, repeatedly running in with mouthfuls of leaves and pine needles and out again to get more. I admired their industry, but it made me tired to think of all the wasted effort on their part and ours.

Then it was my turn to get up on the ladder. I took off the panel and pulled out all the leaves that I could reach. I was actually a bit more thorough about that than the other guy had been. This was in effect a two-room squirrel house, with the further "room" being hard to reach and hard to see into, but I did my best. And somewhere back there I found a piece of wood which was clearly the bit had originally filled that chink, which settled the question of what I would use to close up. It was sturdier and a perfect fit and it just needed some screws or nails.

I was as careful as I could be about not leaving the site unattended during this operation, so that again I could be reasonably sure that when I did close it up I was not imprisoning anybody.