All Fall Down

by Dean Kramer
May, 2008

I have a friend who has spent the last month or so in physical therapy at a balance center. I have another friend who is having her apartment remodeled for safe accessibility, and still another who is currently recovering from a broken rib. As recently as last March I wrote in this column about my mother and I falling together outside a restaurant.

It seems that sooner or later a person with MS is likely to take a tumble.

There are things one can do to minimize that possibility. Using mobility aids even if you think you don’t “need” them, arranging your living space to be as obstacle-free as possible, learning to move “mindfully” (i.e., don’t walk and chew gum at the same time); these are all helpful in preventing falls.

I have fallen many times, cracking ribs and acquiring large purple bruises in the process. In addition to the physical injuries, falls are just scary. They’re sudden, surprising, unplanned and disorienting, not to mention embarrassing (depending on where they happen).

My balance is poor, my legs somewhat spastic, and my glasses with progressive lenses add to my overall instability.

You would think, having read what I’ve just written, that this next part is a complete fabrication. It's not.

Cripple Creek is in a fairly rural area. Wildlife abounds. Each winter, as the cold weather begins, creatures from outdoors move into my attic. In the past there have been white-footed deer mice pitter-patting across the insulation’s vapor barrier. One year there was a gray squirrel that, entering from the barn attached to my cottage, determined to have her babies in the cottage wall.

This year’s creature-noise was bigger than a mouse, but smaller than a gray squirrel. Looking out my back window one mid-March evening I saw something glide from the attic to a nearby tree—a flying squirrel.

I read about them online. They nest in attics in the winter in groups of up to 50, fouling the space with droppings and compromising the insulation. The only thing to do is trap them and relocate them at least 15 miles away, preferably on the far side of a large body of water. Then you’re supposed to build a squirrel barrier out of wire screen cloth, blocking any possible entrance to your attic from outside.

When my house was first being built, in the early 1990s, the contractor asked me if I wanted folding retractable stairs into the attic. At that time my MS was quiescent. I said, “No thanks.” As a consequence my attic is accessible only by step- or extension ladder.

Flying squirrels are completely nocturnal, so early one evening I hauled a five-rung stepladder beneath the attic entrance and climbed up. Standing on the third rung I could lift away the sheetrock cover and see into the attic well enough to slide in a trap baited with peanuts and peanut butter. Ten minutes after placing my first trap I caught a squirrel.

Unfortunately this meant I had to climb the ladder again, replace the filled trap with an empty one and figure out where to put the squirrel I’d caught.

My little terrier, Trisket, and I took the squirrel to a state park 15 miles away. The park has a lake several miles in length. I released the squirrel on the far side of that lake. The dog was very good about traveling with a squirrel. In fact, he didn’t seem to realize there was a squirrel in the trap.

By the time we got home I’d caught a second squirrel.

Thus began a month and a half of climbing up and down the ladder, trapping and relocating flying squirrels.

Once trapped, they became very subdued. Well, who wouldn't be subdued if after a handful of cocktail peanuts you found yourself behind bars? Their stillness probably kept the dog from paying much attention to them.

I distributed them broadly. Some went to the state park. Some went to a wooded area near my office, 34 miles south in Baltimore, Maryland. And two went to a park near the Susquehanna River, 40 miles to the east. One of those two looked to be pregnant and I was very glad to move her along before she had babies.

After the last two were gone it was quiet. I was congratulating myself on having trapped them all, going up and down a ladder, balancing while baiting, setting and placing the traps, all without falling.

But one evening I heard something rattling the metal vent to my whole-house fan. The vent is louvered and sits in the ceiling. Something was stomping around on that vent. Trisket heard it, too. He was very interested. I decided to poke the louver open with my walking staff to see what I could see.

My house consists of a ground floor kitchen and bath, and a large bed-sitting loft accessed via a stair glide.

It turns out the female squirrel I’d relocated was past being pregnant.

What I saw when I opened the vent was a baby flying squirrel. It promptly fell out of the vent and landed on my sofa. A second baby followed it. This one missed the sofa and fell to the ground floor, landing on the kitchen table.

Trisket was terribly excited to see squirrels falling from the sky. Dogs and squirrels can move quickly. I totally cannot. The dog flung himself off the bed, lost traction on the hardwood floor, fell, and went sliding across the room on his face.

As he did so, I grabbed an empty Starbucks cup from the trashcan near where I was standing (good thing I’d had a grande), staggered to the sofa, and put the cup over the squirrel while Trisket regained his footing. 

With MS cognitive issues I no longer multitask well. I had one squirrel in a Starbucks cup, one squirrel on the table in the kitchen, a terrier going postal, and I was trying to figure out what my next move should be.

Thank goodness for human training! I suddenly remembered that my dog was obedience-trained. Thank goodness for dog training! I told Trisket to “kennel up!” and he went right into his crate. I shut the door and left him there while I rode my stair glide down to the kitchen, Starbucks cup in hand.

The baby squirrels were way too small for the regular trap. But I was able to put both of them in a trap sized for the white-footed deer mice I mentioned earlier. The next day I took them to Baltimore and released them where some of their family had already relocated.

The squirrels fell. The dog fell. I stayed on my feet. Amazing!

A squirrel barrier is being installed in the attic next week. Not by me.