Recipe for Failure: Add Squirrel, Delete Coffee

Compared to other problems, mine are minimal, but still enough to disrupt my normal activities.

One problem is a squirrel in a dropped ceiling in my apartment. As in many old buildings converted to apartments, this one has some odd configurations. My apartment is listed on the city property card as having two and a half rooms. It has two 14-by 14-square foot rooms and I suppose the "half" is the 9 by 30-square foot enclosed porch that has a dropped ceiling made of the kind of tiles more often seen in commercial uses. This porch space has ten windows, something I really appreciate in winter, when the living room gets really dark with just one window on the shady side of the building.

For 23 years now, a part of the porch has served as my personal space. Over the years, we have had incursions by bats, squirrels and once a raccoon, who made her home in the outer wall and raised three offspring in there over a period of months. We haven't had a squirrel since Mau the cat joined us in November 2008, but a couple of weeks ago I heard the scampering over my head that meant a squirrel had got in.

Once a squirrel or squirrel crew invades the dropped ceiling, it is only a matter of time until it or they get into my space. Only half an inch of ceiling tile or about an eighth-inch of clear vinyl under light fixtures stands between their newly-claimed space and mine. I have never gotten used to squirrels in the ceiling, though one group just came in at dark and left at dawn. Others crashed through the tiles and wrecked the premises.

Even though it has been years since a squirrel got in, the sound of one overhead on Dec. 9 triggered major anxiety in me. All in a tizzy, I called the management and got an answering service. My distraught call brought no results and meanwhile I moved my most necessary stuff to the living room and set up camp on the ancient futon. Time passed and then I had to stop drinking coffee for three days for a medical test. I think that put me over the brink.

So today I am promised some help with this problem, but between being displaced and deprived of caffeine, I have been barely functioning the past few days. My apologies to readers. 

--Bernice.