A Five-Gallon Bucket & a Pizza Box Lid

A few months ago, Megan, Norah Kate and I were playing a game in the living room when we heard a strange noise. Upon investigating the noise, we knew it was coming from the vent above the stove. Because I know nothing about the mechanics of kitchen electronics and the like. I didn't want to take the foil-like ceiling tiles down to see what would greet me, brainstorming with my mechanical friends and family began. I first started the questioning by inviting my friends on Facebook to help me. With numerous friends telling me to get a BB gun and shooting like mad up at my stove vent, I knew this could be quite an adventure.
As the days went by, the noise got louder. Was it a squirrel? A bird? A bat? A small child? Answers, reasonable ones, were not coming to me. Until one day when we were heading to the park...We had just finished eating at one of our family's favorite restaurants and Megan needed to stop by the house to pick up something. I pulled into the driveway for her to quickly "run in." When I saw her spin a triple axle and return to the back porch rather quickly, I knew we had something. Quickly grabbing Norah Kate, I anxiously approached the back porch not knowing what to expect.
"It's loose." When I peaked in the house, I noticed the aluminum foil ceiling tiles that once separated us from the large unknown mammal were on the kitchen floor. Debris (looking almost like cedar mulch) accompanied the tiles. I am not too fearful of many things, but rabid, unknown animals kinda scare me.
With both feet now in the house, I crept up closer to the stove. I told Megan and Norah Kate that I loved them and if anything happened to me to run like mad out to the car and call 9-1-1.
Inching closer to the crime scene, I noticed that where the aluminum foil ceiling tiles were, sits a motorized fan with angled blades. Cautiously looking into the fan, I found what had been making the noise. It was a squirrel. His head peaked out to say, "Hello, there!" When I saw his beedy, vermit-like, cute, yet chilling face, I sprinted outside moving my family away from the door.
"It's a squirrel, guys. It's alive. I see it. Stand back."
I knew my next step was in sequence. Like any other reasonable man, I called my dad. No answer. I called my father-in-law. Since he lives in town, over he came with two pair of gloves. My mother-in-law joined him (Who wouldn't?).
I went out to the garage to get Megan's rabbit cage, thinking we could coerce him into it. When I brought out the hutch (It's kinda large.), Carol (mother-in-law) and Megan looked at me like I was nuts (Speaking of nuts...I thought, "We could lure him out of there with some....Great idea!). Of course the hutch was way too big to affix to the stove vent, so out went that idea. The squirrel though, gave us a new one.
As Dave (father-in-law) and I talked about our options, down popped the squirrel's tail. Like the back of a Davy Crockett hat, there lie a brown, bushy, squirrel tail, ready for the taking. Dave looked at me and said, "If I pull that, you get the bucket ready, ok?"
Like church bells, Dave was going to yank that dangling tail in hopes that it'd propel the squirrel down into the 5-gallon bucket I was holding. I knew (I had seen it on many movies.) that once Dave did that, the squirrel would get angry and affix itself to my face not allowing me to see as I hurridly wail my arms in the air searching for a way to get it off my face. Then, the person without the squirrel-face, would take a pan and knock the silly and the squirrel off my face. I knew that probably wasn't the best option. He said, "Ready?"
"Dave, I don't think I can do this!" I chickened out just as the squirrel's tail shimmied up the vent hole. No longer could we grab the squirrel; in fact, we could barely see his smirking little face. Dave had been there for quite some time, so I said I'd rig up a special capturing device to catch Mr. Squirrel. "Wait here!" I ran outside, grabbed the five-gallon bucket (Thanks Hometown Hardware!) came darting back inside, shuffled through Megan's assortment of cookbooks, grabbed the one I thought would work best (No, I wasn't planning on cooking squirrel.), and propped up the bucket up against the hole, sitting Betty Crocker's Best of 2009 Cookbook since the bucket wouldn't reach the stove by itself. Before affixing the bucket to the hole, Megan had a great idea.
" We should put something for him to eat. I am sure he is hungry. " So, Megan meticulously peanut-buttered some whole-wheat bread and gently placed the delicacy in the bottom of the bucket. "He's sure to come down and eat that!" The bucket and plan were in place. We said our good-byes to the Galliarts and anxiously awaited Mr. Squirrel's decent.
Minutes turned into hours...hours into days...a couple of days later, as the family was watching television, we heard the noise. We all jumped off the couch quicker than we ever have before in our lifetime and sprinted to the kitchen. He was in the bucket. I started to grab the bucket, but realized there wasn't a top on the bucket and didn't know how to contain our live-in once I removed the bucket. Megan grabbed a pizza box lid. I said, "When I pull this out, you will have to put that lid on the box SUPER fast!" With a "1-2-3-Team!," I started removing the bucket. Mr. Squirrel jumped up to hold on to the ledge of the hole, so I had to get a stick to pry his grip off. Falling into the bucket, the squirrel was not happy. In fact, he was so discontent, he was moving anxiously about...too fast for Megan to put the lid atop the bucket. So, like our nightmares had suggested, he hopped out of that box and was running loose in our house. We shut the door to the dining room hoping to contain him in the dining room / kitchen area. He was volleying around the house like a tennis ball. Running to go get the broom, all I (and the city of Winfield) could hear was the screaming and shrills of my wife. Galloping around the kitchen, all she needed was a stick horse to complete the look. In fact, I thought this was the day that I would see my 2nd child (Megan is pregnant. I thought this event would surely put her into labor.). With Megan's flailing arms and my guided broom movements, we focused the squirrel on his exit---the door. Once he saw daylight, he sprinted right out the door.
Norah Kate, unbeknownst to us, had grabbed our video camera, and video taped the whole thing. Of course the video wasn't pointing at anything but her feet, but the sound captured a lot of great screams and shrills.
What a day.

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Hyperbole [hahy-pur-buh-lee] : noun. 1. an obvious and intentional exaggeration

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