There's a party in our chimney ...

And only squirrels are invited.

So as most of you already know, we have had quite the run-in with squirrels since moving into our house. The squirrels have always liked to sit in the tree or on the roof tourmenting our dogs.

Then the squirrels found a way to get into the attic. That resulted in it making its way into our garage and Roxy, who loathes squirrels, acting as our rodent exterminator.

Fast forward a couple months and another squirrel finds its way into our attic. Well just repeat the previous scenario but in our back yard this time. Roxy is earning her suppers around here, and Mack on her heels helping any way he can.

Then, again, lets go forward a few more months to a couple weeks ago. This time things played out a little different. Instead of going into our attic, the squirrel decides to fall down the chimney and get stuck on top of the flue. This leads to Roxy freaking out and trying to get into the fire place ... running inside and outside to the fireplace chute.

We are assuming at some point it found its way out, but Roxy wasn't satisfied. After listening to Roxy sniff at the chute for hours on end, I decided to open the chute to show her there is nothing in it ... well I went back inside to return a few minutes later to this:

She dug her way into the chute and wedged herself in as deep as she could go ... absolutely covered in sut.

After hosing her and the patio down, I thought we were done with the squirrel issues. Boy was I wrong. A day or two later, I hear strange noises in the chimney again, and this time its loud and clear. Well this little squirrels buddy was on the roof making lots of noise. But no noise was louder than when that squirrel fell down the chimney itself and a squirrel fight broke out on top of our flue. I was home alone, and positive that these things were going to fall through into the house.

As soon as Brian gets home, the noises stop, but I am positive that they are still in there so we think that we can open the flue with a plastic bag under it and catch the squirrels...well nothing falls through and we haven't heard the noise since. Finally...our squirrel issue is over.

Until today ... when I start smelling something funny. Could it be? No...the squirrel couldn't have died in there could it? Hopefully Brian is in a good mood when he gets home today because he will be playing chimney investigator.

... to be continued