"Chad, I think we have a squirrel."
These are infamous events that occur FAR TOO OFTEN. I woke up and sure enough you could hear the little bugger, crawling around inside the attic space. The truth is, we know where they're getting in but we've never taken the proper measures to fix it. Also, we've never had any problems catching them.. so, even though it’s a pain in the butt... we haven't fixed it. Until today.
Let me start back a ways... when I bought the house last year the roof was in pretty poor shape. There was enough to be done by us (a bathroom, a kitchen, painting, cleaning, moving) and my Dad "knew a guy who'd do it cheap." so we hired the work out. It turned out that my Dad's "guy" was a policeman from Columbus who did roofing on the side with his brother.
The day Ed Spence came out to the house to give me an estimate, I told him I wouldn't be home. I was out of town but came back early.. and he didn't know I was home. So when I walked up to his car and tapped on the glass he seemed a bit weirded out. He made nervous small chat and never introduced me to the young girl he had in his passenger seat. He'd made references to his "assistant" on the phone, but I assumed that this young girl must have been his daughter... she was far too young to have anything to do with roofing. However, Kelly and I both got a weird vibe from him. He was in a hurry and left, without ever getting out of the car. Without getting a ladder out, or climbing on the roof.. or even really looking at the roof - he told us he'd take it down to the rafters, OSB what was needed, reroof and fix the gutters for $4k (including materials).
As it turns out, there we FIVE layers of shingles on the house... he filled a 20 square dumpster and then a second 15 square dumpster with all the shingles that came off of the house. A five man team spent seven days in mid-August on that roof, it was hot, disgusting, miserable looking work... and when they were done, complaining, pissed off and realizing some body fucked up on the quote... they had reboarded and roofed the ENTIRE roof.
So here's where the squirrel comes in.. on the side of the house that they did last, there's a side fascia board that is rotted out. And I mean, rotted out. There's a huge gaping hole right in the middle and it's perfect for squirrels to crawl through and into our attic crawl space. If the roofers hadn't been so pissed off about the amount of work they had to do they would have never affixed the new drip edge and rehung the gutters to it. We knew the hole was there, we knew that squirrels could come through it... but we didn't fix it because other projects seemed more important. So in the 1 year since its been fixed we've had three squirrels.
Anyways, back to the roofer... about two months after Ed finished my roof my Dad called me. He said "hey, did you hear about Spence?" and of course being outside of Columbus I hadn't. My Dad informed me that Spence had been charged with the rape of a 14 year old girl.. and all the pieces came together. The young girl, his "assistant" was likely the victim and he was weird because he didn't think I was going to be there. He got the hell out of there because he didn't want to have to answer questions or introduce her... and that's probably why the quote was so low.
Ed Spence ended up pleading guilty for rape and received 8.5 years. Just imagine, he's a child rapist cop, in prison... I'm sure he's getting everything he deserves.
Click this link to read a news report about his conviction.
I on the other hand, just set up a have-a-heart trap in the attic and nailed up aluminum sheeting to cover the holes this afternoon. The sheeting is a temporary fix, but I think this will be the last squirrel.
This is a photo of me and the last squirrel we caught.
No comments:
Post a Comment