Pittston Dispatch // PD Columnists // Maria Heck - Mother's Daze

Sunday March 14, 2010 | 12:00 AM

My husband has gone completely crazy. Some may say the day he married me was the beginning of that particular tailspin, but I’m here to tell you that a squirrel has finished the job.

I was pretending to brainstorm yesterday and heard an odd scratching sound. I thought perhaps I was hearing the inner-turmoil of my frontal lobe as I was working overtime to come-up with a column topic this week. But no, that would usually be accompanied by the smell of burning and crippling self doubt.

This sound was different. Sort of like a saw against a slab of concrete. Or a knife against my famous “pork chop surprise”.

I peeked outside, expecting to see someone shoveling our sidewalk, like the snow fairies or something. Nothing.

I looked on the roof to see if Santa was returning to take back the size XXL sweatpants my husband bought me for Christmas (moron). No, not Santa.

My husband then came into the office, heard the scratching sound and quickly surmised it was his worst catastrophe recognized – animal-in-the-eaves syndrome.

Oh crap, I thought, here we go again. Last time I witnessed such an exhibition of frenzied excitement, there was a bird stuck in our chimney. The poor little thing was flapping and tweeting and rotating around its enforced catacomb, but there was no exit strategy for the pitiful sparrow. My husband rubbed his hands together and spent several days plotting and planning how to capture that poor winged creature. I knew how that bird felt – trapped, nowhere to go but down. It’s the exact feeling of despair I experienced in week 3 of Weight Watchers.

Something happens to a man when confronted with a trapped rodent. He becomes possessed; an almost gleeful obsession.

My husband began frantically pivoting up to the attic in order to hang half his body out the window to utilize a very clever capture technique: screaming threats and expletives at the squirrel. Because you know, that squirrel can perfectly understand what the maniac is saying.

My husband is making an ass out of himself and the neighbors probably have Family Services on speed dial. He’s shouting out the window: “Okay you @#$%& squirrel, you’re dead. Dead! I know what you’re doing. Well, it’s not going to work. You’ll be squirrel stew! Squirrel stew!”

He then proceeds to take a broomstick and tap it repeatedly on the roof.

If the damn squirrel wasn’t annoying me with his chewing of the cedar shingles, then this insane broomstick tapper was going to send me straight to the corner of Xanax Street and Straight Jacket Boulevard.

The squirrel fled and my husband thought he had brilliantly solved the problem. I rolled my eyes and said: “Why can’t you use this energy for good instead of evil? Why can’t you, for instance, fix the baseboards in the dining room or the light in the laundry room?”

He replied: “Oh, this is more important. That little bugger is out to get me, but I’m going to get him first, by God!”

There was no rationalizing with the crazy man.

Sadly, this occurred during the recent snowstorm, so we were all witness to the chaotic goings on between the apparently highly manipulative squirrel and my husband. The squirrel was trapped and so were we.

It was an all-day production of Man vs. Wild and I was so fortunate to have front-row seats.

There was a lot of plotting by my husband and many hours of discussion. With the squirrel, not me. A common refrain throughout the day was: “I’ve got him now! Ha! He’s in the tree! Staring at me! I showed him. He’s too scared to come back! I totally outsmarted him.”

(Is outsmarting an animal with a brain the size of a pencil eraser really such an accomplishment?).

And with that, he again dusts his hands together, plasters a self-satisfied grin upon his animal-killer face and goes back up to the attic to make sure all is well in the world of mammal-paranoia.

It’s cavemen mentality.

They think they’re hunting bison with clubs and spears, for God’s sake.

Nowadays you can call a wildlife trapper who takes care of the whole mess. But, my husband thinks; “What fun is that? Why pay money to a professional when I have all this stuff to work with?”

If you pass by my home, and see a very short, very excitable man hanging out the third floor window with a hammer, BB gun and a broom, don’t be concerned.

I’m at the other end, holding his feet and contemplating a big push.

And don’t worry. There will be no Squirrel Stew on the menu tonight.

Although that may taste better than my Pork Chop Surprise.