Circuitous Routes

Little known fact: if you catch a squirrel and release it, it will return to you unless you go far and take a circuitous route. Squirrels have a very good sense of direction. If you drive in a straight line, even if you go twenty miles, the squirrel will find its way back home to you. You have to invest the time to do a proper “release” or it’s coming back. Drive it around for while, take lots of turns on twisty back country roads. The object is to confuse its sense of direction.

Why, you wonder. Well, my parents have a lot of squirrels in their yard. Two years ago, relatives these squirrels, grandparents perhaps, or a great aunt or uncle maybe, found a secret entrance into my parent’s house and set up camp for the winter. This is not a good thing. This is a very bad thing, and it took months and months of hard work and quite a lot of cash and corrective measures to humanely rout them out. You do not want squirrels to set up camp in your home.

My mother is serious about getting rid of the squirrels before they decide to come in for the winter. A week ago I went to Agway with my her to get a Have-A-Heart trap. Big enough for squirrels, but not big enough for skunks, she said. Agway offered to rent the trap. There was a sign on the shelf, $4/day trap rental. That was a good deal. Traps are not cheap. My mother calculated the number of squirrels and the number of days it might take to catch them all and in the end she decided it would be a good long term investment to purchase the trap. 

In two days she caught and released three squirrels. She may have caught more by now; I haven’t asked in a day or two. She takes them for long drives in the country and releases them to live new lives in new locations, leaving a crowded village existence behind for the wide open country. Lots of oak trees for acorns.

Not to be left out my father has searched the internet for ideal distances and suggested squirrel release routes from their home - there are websites devoted to this, really. Ideally, you should cover ten to twenty miles, just not in a straight line. Never in a straight line.