Warning! dead animal photo alert ...

Rick and I laid in bed the first morning after our arrival and listened to the familiar sound of the furnace clicking on. We waited for the comforting whoosh! of the burner being ignited but nothing happened. For five minutes or so we lay in denial as the pre-burner fan whirred on and on. Crap. The furnace was not working. We got up and noticed it didn’t smell very good in here either. Rick checked all the things that he could but without taking the furnace apart, we were stumped. What we did know was that the smell was pretty bad. We assumed that a mouse or something had somehow gotten into the exhaust pipe and was blocking the air flow, hence the safety feature of our propane furnace was such that it would not turn on and asphyxiate us. A good thing!

Of course this was Saturday and the long Labor Day weekend loomed before us. We knew it would be Tuesday before we might be able to get anyone to come and look at it. The weather is very nice (70’s during the day) and not getting too cold at night yet, so all the heat we really needed was provided by the wood stove first thing in the morning to just take the chill off the room. We’re lucky it’s not winter.

So first thing yesterday morning Rick was on the phone trying to find someone to come out. He wasn’t having much luck at first. Either they didn’t work on propane furnaces or were not willing to cross the Colorado state line (we are only 3 miles from the Colorado/Wyoming border). He finally found one company that said they could even come out that very afternoon.  We were thrilled. The last thing we wanted to do was leave the cabin with winter fast approaching with a non-functioning furnace.

When he arrived he felt certain it was as we had feared. Something had gotten in or fallen down the exhaust pipe and died. He started taking apart the furnace and the smell was becoming overpowering. He started to remove the combustion air blower (had to look this up!)  and turned to us and said “it’s a lot fresher than we thought, probably been in there only a week.” He had to get a mask for his face and then removed the blower. There, with its head stuck in the end of the blower was a squirrel.

Poor thing. Somehow, and we don’t really know how, he managed to get up on our roof and drop down into the exhaust pipe. He had no recourse but to follow the pipe down and ended up with his head stuck in the mouth of the blower. So bizarre. Our roof is slick metal, so I can’t imagine how he managed it. Maybe he dropped from the solar panel. We’ll never know. Thank you little squirrel for such a welcome home to our cabin. Geez. Sorry for the photo but I just had to do it. Hopefully it will never happen again.

Then, the other morning we found this little offering on the front door mat.

We knew exactly what it meant. Pack rat. Those pesky little wood rats that make their nests out of whatever catches their eye. We’ve had them in the past and they are nearly impossible to get rid of. We had one that used to live in Beastie (our old Ford pick-up truck with a plow that we used to keep up here) and every time we came up we had to clean out the nest from the engine. He not only built a nest but chewed on wires causing shorts in Beastie’s system, which believe me, Beastie did not need.  I remember one time the dogs had one cornered in an old hollow log and in the end they did get him. We had to pull them off him.

So, we were not happy with the gifts. Not at all. RIck popped the hood of the Suburban and sure enough, there were the beginnings of a small nest. A furled, fresh green leaf from the yarrow, two dried up dog turds, some dead grass and some other things we could not readily identify. He removed the nest and we set some traps last night using dog biscuits. This morning the dog biscuits were gone, the traps unsprung, and a new nest under the hood. We removed the nest yet again and went back inside to get ready for our trip into Laramie for groceries and gas.

We got in the truck, started it up and heard a loud thunk like something had come loose. We looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Rick got out and nothing seemed amiss, so we went on our way into Laramie shopping, getting the oil changed in the Suburban, etc.

After coming home we parked in the same spot and let the dogs out to pee. They thought the front of the truck smelled pretty interesting. We figured it was just the leftover smell of pack rat pee. Bella was sniffing something on the ground and she was kind of afraid of it, yet interested. I asked Rick who was standing right there just what it was that she was sniffing. He picked up something off the ground and said ” pack rat tail.” He still must have been in the engine somewhere when we started it up. On closer inspection under the hood we did indeed find bits and pieces of something. We have to wonder if the folks who changed our oil came across more bits and pieces and just didn’t tell us?

That pack rat may have met it’s demise, but I’m sure there are more. All part of living in the country but definitely not one of the perks.

Hope you got that pack rat- I have never heard of anything like that before! Sounds like it could be a huge problem! Glad your furnace got fixed so quickly though.

I do not think I am cut out to live in that much nature!  I think that I would not be able to stand the suspense from visit to visit as to what might have made a home in my home!

But what about the moose, the elk, the antelope?

A friend of mine is having trouble with mice nesting in her Volvo along with the subsequent electrical problems—what a pain.  We’ve both had great success with the Rat Zapper <http://www.ratzapper.com>.  My husband is the trapper and he’s gotten rats, mice and one ground squirrel in our garage.

Re: your exhaust pipe on the roof—can you fashion some sort of screen to keep out any more critters?

I’m a city gal and I think I’ll remain a city gal!

Great pictures—enjoying them all. Well, not of the squirrel. Thanks for sharing all this with us!

Jessica, we think he’s gone. No nests in the engine for two days now! Pack rats are pretty common in the west.

Jan, I hear ya!

Becky, those guys are just fun to have around, they don’t cause any problems and can’t get under the hood of our truck and eat the wiring.

Christina, we asked the furnace expert about putting a screen over the top of the pipe and he said it was not a good thing to do. In this cold country it can form ice and cause more problems.

Mary, it does take some getting used to. Sorry about the squirrel!