This is a story about a squirrel named Stubby.
He only has about two-thirds is his tail. Stubby has a nest in my neighbour's (dying) ash tree.
Stubby gives exactly no fucks.
Stubby.
On this particular morning Stubby did not care that I was standing there. He did not care that I knocked on the window. Stubby did not care about anything until he noticed the cat, at which point he jumped up and fell right off the second story window ledge. Don't feel bad, his head popped right back up 10 seconds later. (I'm not going to pretend I didn't laugh.)
Do you notice anything about Stubby in that photo? Like the wood that is sticking out from his mouth? I didn't notice that day. No, I didn't notice until a few days later when I walked into the office to find him back in the same spot chowing down on my window sill.
Yeah, that's right. That wood in his mouth is my window sill.
Apparently my window sill was delicious
It's hard to see from that angle but Stubby ate a good 8 inches of the window sill all the way to the window.
Stubby is a jerk.
I knew we couldn't go into the winter like that so I later that morning I called the window company my friend recommended. They came out that afternoon to give me estimate. Because this window (which, by the way, is actually three windows, and the second largest window in the house) is stacked directly above the living room window (the largest one in the house) I got estimates to replace both. We wanted them to match since they make up so much of the front of our house. But I was also a little concerned that if I just replaced one of them, Stubby would just take himself to the lower level and chow down on the living room window sill in the middle of winter. So by the end of the day I had ended up signing the order because SQUIRREL.
So that is how we went from planning to replace exactly zero windows to replacing two of the largest windows in our house the day after we got back from our summer vacation. I haven't seen Stubby since, but here's hoping he doesn't find vinyl as tasty as wood.
(Little did we know this was just the beginning of our summer wildlife vacations. Just wait until you hear about the raccoons...)
* We went with Big City Windows. A friend of mine had spent two months calling and getting estimates from various companies and that's who she used and recommended. We got great services and we're really happy with our windows. I hope the squirrels hate them.