I rent a house with three friends I met in college. Recently we had a problem with squirrels getting into the space between the roof and E’s ceiling. The landlord agreed to let E hire someone to trap the squirrels in cages and take it out of the rent. The trappers were supposed to trap for one month, but keep trapping if they failed to get all the squirrels. It’s been longer than a month but there are still squirrels so the traps are still out. According to E, the squirrels are killed, not released.
This morning I checked and both cages had squirrels in them. I got to thinking - hey, my Mom loves birds and squirrels in her yard and feeds them, maybe I could put the squirrels in her yard. I call and ask her, telling her it’s better if I don’t explain my request but she insists. So now she’s aware that there are two squirrels with a looming death penalty. But she agrees to let me take them over.
Next I ask E if she has any objections. She gets very upset and says that if the trapper doesn’t find squirrels in the cages he will claim there aren’t any more and stop coming. I tell her I don’t agree with her conclusions but will respect her wishes. I tell my mom what happened. She asks me to ask the trapper guy if he can release them to the wild when he knocks on the door.
Mentally fatigued by all the squirrels nonsense, I turn off my phone so I can get some work done and take a nap. Never hear the trapper guy knock, if he did indeed come yet. I turn on my phone to make an unrelated phone call. There are 5! voice mails from my mother asking about the squirrels. During my unrelated phone call, housemate W answers house phone and apparently it was my Mom calling there because I wasn’t picking up my cellphone. I call my mom back and she is very upset that I haven’t been picking up my phone and furious because W was apparently snippy to her when she called.
So yeah. Sorry squirrels, you’re on your own from now on.