Sometime yesterday evening, my house was broken into.  I was able to apprehend the intruder this afternoon.

http://www.TWNCommunications.Net/Other/SquirrelStove.jpg
http://www.TWNCommunications.Net/Other/Squirrel.jpg

Alright, so maybe it isn't your stereotypical breaking and entering, but he still put up one heck of a fight.

The old wood stove in the picture is located in my basement, and hasn't been used since I moved in three years ago.  It connects to a full brick chimney outside.  Apparently, Mr. Squirrel got a little too curious and fell down the chimney into the wooden stove.  That must've been quite a fall!

He got stuck in a bend in the stove pipe last night, and I had no way to get to him.  He created one heck of a racket, and I thought someone had broken into my basement until I located the source of the noise.

He must've made it the rest of the way down the stovepipe into the stove itself sometime last night, and I was able to get him into a bucket.

http://www.TWNCommunications.Net/Other/SquirrelBucket.jpg

He is now safely outside once again, doing whatever squirrels do when it's 8 degrees and snowing.  Now I'll have to make an expedition onto my roof to figure out what happened to the mesh covering on the chimney...

-b0b
(...cheers!)

Maybe he thought he was Santa.

Squirrels are weird.  Please refer to an old blog entry of mine:

Okay, so the STRANGEST THING EVER happened to me Friday night...

I was at my cousin's cooking several mouth-watering sweets for my youth group's bake sale to benefit our upcoming trip to New York. My cookies were looking golden brown, so I asked my cousin Vince where his family kept the oven mitts. He pointed towards a particular drawer, which I opened. Sure enough, it contained oven mitts. I started to slide my hand into one so that I could use it, when all of a sudden I felt some slight movement. Since oven mitts don't usually move on their own, I knew there was something up, so I immediately drew out my hand. All of a sudden I see this big furry animal hop out of the mitt, jump onto the floor and scurry out of the kitchen into the house. I screamed, of course, thinking it was a rat, but it had a big bushy tail. Yes, a SQUIRREL. A SQUIRREL had somehow made its way into the house, come down the stairs into the kitchen, opened a drawer, hopped in, got cozy inside an oven mitt, closed the drawer, and SURVIVED long enough for me to find it. Vince, my cousins, my aunt and I managed to corner it, capture it with a towel, and chuck it outside. Afterwards we looked at each other as if to say "You saw that, right? It wasn't just me?"

Honestly, does that happen...to ANYBODY? This has definitely been my most profound WTF?! moment and the highlight of my summer...and I still have a scratch from the chipmunk to prove it.

/again, WTF?!
//still geeking out about it

Make yourself some squirrel stew for your birthday or something  :D