One Thing Leads To Another

In my previous post about my Sweet Killer Cat, I mentioned the fact that I-Needa had a nasty little squirrel problem a bit ago. Upon reading the blog, I-Needa sent me a detailed story about that incident. I knew I had the gist of it right, but here is the real and true story. I think it can safely be identified as another God Story.

There was a chimney squirrel. I-Needa actually heard it scrabbling in the chimney trying to get out. She thought perhaps one had fallen into the chimney and she could just open the damper and that would solve the problem. Of course, SHE wasn't going to be the one to open the damper. Reinforcements were called in to handle that job.

Actually, I-Needa lives in a condo that has the lovely association dues for outside things. She called one of the board members to find out what to do, and he handled it for her. A brother and sister team arrived. They often did some repairs for the area.

The job wasn't as easy as it seemed it might be at first. Things just weren't right. When the damper was opened, no squirrel came out. It was determined that the critter had to have slipped somewhere between the firebox and the outside. So, they would have to tear off the wood trim covering the fireplace area outside. That revealed that the insulation from the second story had fallen into a pile around the fire box. I-Needa was told that if she had used it for several hours in a row, it would possibly have ignited based on the condition of the stuff. SCARY!

The gal who ended up digging out the stuff happened to work in a vet's office. She had those lovely shoulder length gloves used when inspecting cow and horse innards. That sounds like a plan to me. For those who are squeamish, you might skip the rest of this paragraph. Well, she pulled out dehydrated carcasses of two birds and another squirrel, plus the fresh one that hadn't been gone very long. Apparently, the remains had come with the property when I-Needa bought it.

When they tore off the outer part of the chimney from the ground to the second story, they also found termites happily munching away. Bummer! I-Needly ran into the house and called her termite guy. She had been paying him to inspect, so was covered for one year. The next day, he was out to treat the area. Then the extraction team fixed the thing on her chimney so other varmints wouldn't fall in.

While not liking having squirrels running around on the roof, or dealing with all of the mess, it is good to recognize the good that was done. I-Needa said that God did three great things. First was saving her from getting a fire outside the fire box. The second was keeping her walls from having problems from termites. They were quickly murdered. The third was setting up a good relationship with the people who came to do the work for her. Later the father of the brother/sister team was hired to come back with a team to paint the whole complex. I-Needa felt better about having people crawling around her house and in her yard when she knew the man had such great kids.

Sometimes we have to decide if we are going to chose to see the negative or the positive. Of course, she didn't know of all the good things that would happen when all of this began. We often use the adage about hindsight being better than foresight. It is often difficult to see anything good when we are in the middle of working out problems. In hindsight, if we look hard, we can see that we were being cared for after all.