We Must Protect this House (and Amaze Our Friends Doing It)

by Dean Kramer
May, 2006

Many of us with MS, especially in the early years, are told we look so good we can’t possibly really be sick. That can be an annoying statement to hear implying, as it can, that either we are being dishonest in claiming to have a disease or that if we do have a disease it can’t be a very terrible one as long as we remain cosmetically acceptable.

But in later years, when for many if not most of us some disability has manifested, we don’t hear that as often. Instead we may find ourselves fighting to maintain a presence as people begin to assume we are too weak, tired, or disabled to participate in certain activities. Granted those assumptions are based on experience because at various times we are any or all of those things. But even when made out of concern to spare us difficulty or disappointment, they can deprive us of a vital role in our own on-going lives.

I was diagnosed in 1984 and can still walk. I have to use a cane or two, or a wall, and walk neither quickly nor gracefully. I also can’t walk for very long. Over the last few years, increasingly, I use a manual wheelchair or a scooter. Though I’ve made a great effort to keep most of my home and land accessible, I’ve had to say “goodbye” to some of the places here at Cripple Creek where neither the chair nor the scooter can go. No longer will I descend the narrow stairs to the bridge across the stream and wander on the woodland path through the wetland on the far side. Nor will I climb the rocky ridge across the road where the columbine and bloodroot bloom in Spring.

Much of the barn has become off limits, too. I can’t imagine myself climbing thirty feet to the loft or clambering down the narrow ladder to the former cow byre. Even in the house, small though it is, there’s an attic reachable only with an extension ladder. I'd accepted that I’d never get up there again.

But that was about to change. I’d like to write that I experienced a sudden remission. But, sadly, such is not the case. I’m sure you have heard of mothers who suddenly find the strength to lift the front end of an automobile off a child who’s been pinned beneath it, yes? Well, my experience was something like that. Only the “child” was my home and the “automobile” that threatened to destroy it was a nest of squirrels.

I’ve lived rurally for 30 years. I’ve had to have groundhogs removed from the barn’s foundation. I’ve had to eliminate white-footed deer mice from my pantry. There have been encounters with carpenter bees, bald-faced hornets, and fire ants. I’m comfortable with deer since I don’t garden. I love snakes because they keep down the chipmunk population. I accept a few bats, phoebes, and swallows. They all eat mosquitoes and flies. But the squirrels had to go.

The house Twink and I occupy, with our 3 dogs, is attached to the barn. There are always a few squirrels scampering about the property. But this April we heard something large in the wall between the barn and the house. The dogs heard it as well. It made a clawing, scrabbling, scratching, rustling sound that began to feel as if it was coming from inside our own skulls. In two places it actually chewed through the sheet rock into the living room. For a week, we pounded on the wall when we heard it but it merely scrabbled a few feet further away. At least it wasn’t in the attic with the air conditioning unit, the ductwork, and the wiring. I've always had a fear of squirrels getting into my attic.

Squirrels can do a lot of damage to a home. Knowing this, and because it was attached to the barn, I’d had a squirrel barrier made for the attic when the house was built. “It won’t keep them out if they really want to get in there,” the builder had said,” but they’d have to be pretty desperate.”

At a loss as to how to rid ourselves of the squirrel in the wall, we called the oxymoronically titled Wild Animal Control Officer. He recommended we spray ammonia into the hole in the drywall to drive the squirrel out of the nest. So we did that, in the process turning a dime-sized hole into a silver dollar-sized hole. And we succeeded in driving the squirrel ten feet further along the wall. But now, of course, it had to dig a new nest which necessitated a lot more scratching, scrabbling clawing and running back and forth.

We called the Wild Animal Control Officer again. He came out to the barn and showed Twink several holes high up on the inside wall and a couple down low where the squirrel was getting in and out. He set two no-kill traps baited with peanuts. Another week went by at the end of which we caught one little squirrel. That and the continued noises in the wall told us we had not one squirrel, but a mom and her babies nesting in the wall.

Next, the Wild Animal Control Officer suggested we drop some bug bombs right down those holes the squirrels were using as front doors. He said that would drive them out. By now we hadn’t slept well for 3 weeks because squirrels are active at night during the waxing and waning of the full moon and we were in that cycle. I was ready to take a chainsaw to the living room wall. The dogs spent all day staring longingly at the wall or out in the dog yard staring wistfully at the barn. No one was thinking clearly.

A friend climbed up our extension ladder, set off the bombs, and, in a well-meaning but totally misguided effort, sealed the holes with window screening. This made the squirrels desperate. They were so desperate that they succeeded in getting through the squirrel barrier and into the attic where the air conditioner, ductwork, and wiring were. My worst fear had been realized. I could hear them in the attic destroying my home. I’d had all I could take. I walked to the barn and tore the window screen off one of the holes in case the squirrels found their way back out. Then I begged Twink to set up the extension ladder and go take a look in the attic, which she did.

Twink is a country girl now, but she was born and raised in the city where she spent most of her adult life. She has always had a tender heart for animals both domestic and wild; cute little furry creatures that mean no one any harm. But she had been pushed to her limits as well. Country life has poison ivy in it. Twink is particularly allergic and was suffering her annual raging case. Consequently, she was on steroids. Many people with MS know exactly what steroids do to your mental faculties after a week. In addition, the dear furry doggies had run into the yard that morning and almost killed a cute furry bunny that poor Twink had to remove, in its death throes, to the bushes outside the fence. And, of course, she hadn’t been sleeping. She climbed up the ladder, pushed aside the attic door and shined her flashlight directly on the Mother Squirrel. Think of the movie, Alien. The squirrel was perched on the air conditioner chomping on a piece of pipe insulation. To Twink, she was the size of a grizzly and was ready to attack. Twink came down the ladder. “I’m not going up into the attic.” She said.

I know better than to argue with a woman on steroids. “Hold the ladder.” I said, “I’ll go up.”

“You can’t” Twink fretted, but I insisted. My baby was pinned beneath a car. Twink held the ladder as I started to climb slowly, but with determination. Unfortunately, though, I couldn’t lift my legs. With Twink lifting and guiding my feet onto the rungs I continued. I would not be stopped.

Once in the attic I sat for a long while familiarizing myself again with the space. It had been years since I’d visited. The climb had been tiring. I was shaky. But I was also exhilarated. No squirrels greeted my flashlight. If one had, I probably would have tried to bludgeon it. I asked Twink to hand me up the traps. Finally I stood and walked deep into the attic along the joists, holding the trusses as I went. I saw where the squirrels had got in. I wouldn’t be able to get far enough under the insulation to do anything about that. I set the traps, turned off the air conditioner’s motor, and climbed back down to the amazed admiration of Twink. Humbly, (“shucks, ma’am, it weren’t nothin'. Anybody coulda done it.”) I accepted her congratulations. I’d done what I could to protect our home.

The squirrels were unhappy in the attic. They were unhappy, period. One of their family members had been trapped and made to disappear. Another had been drenched with ammonia. They’d endured constant pounding on their walls, predatory dog barking, and poison gas. They were demoralized. They hadn’t been sleeping well. They stayed overnight in the attic, but by morning they’d found their way out via the eaves. As soon as I heard the second one plop from the attic onto the porch roof I sealed the last hole in the barn wall again.

My baby is safely recovering. It needs a little patching with Spackle, some sanding, some painting and some pipe insulation replaced.

A week later I was invited to a party. The home to which I went was at the top of a long, steep stairway. Everyone was in a dither about whether, and how, I’d get there. They offered several suggestions ranging from “back up the stairs on your butt” through “drive up the neighbor’s driveway and hike across the yard” to “we’ll drag you up the hill on a tarp.” But I just took my time and climbed those stairs slowly and as surely as I could.

My friends were amazed. But I just smiled. “Shucks, ma’am, it weren’t nothin'. Anybody coulda done it.” And all of us, with MS, do.