Sciurus Vulgaris...

...or also known as red squirrel or devil rodent here in the sticks. and vulgaris is so appropriate here. i mean, check out the picture of the one with "hair horns."

yesterday night, pete and i found one of these suckers in a storage container that held some of our winter clothing. i was in the process of moving it to another location and had not done so yet. i imagined it got in, since the lid was not put on top yet.

over the past few days, we saw our cat (chunky) digging around in this box and trying to pull stuff out. we thought he was just being silly, but turns out he was hunting. so...yeah. this devil rodent was in there for the past few days, nesting and making the sweaters look like they were alive. like alien or something. and probably doing #1 AND #2 on my sweaters! so last night, pete and i (mostly pete) caught it and put it in a little squirrel trap to take out of the house. btw, the squirrel trap is useless. we've had it for over a year and never caught any of the lil' buggers that have been hanging out in our roof scratching around doing goodness knows what.

anyway, we did not kill him. we drove him down the street to a safe lil' area that had beautiful trees and a lake view. unfortunately, squirrels can be territorial. i hoped that with his ferocious biting of our towel that he would be able to fend for himself and be the new king of his domain.

*i do not hate squirrels, per se. i actually enjoy them when i see them, usually. especially the albino one that lives in our trees. i just dislike their use of my facilities without proper welcome.