Watch out for squirrels!

Sounds funny, right? Not so much at our house last night.

Just after we got all the kids to sleep, my mom and I sat down to watch Grey's Anatomy. My dear husband was tidying up the toys on the other side of the family room when I saw this dark thing fall down from the balcony by the stairs.

"What was that?" I wondered as I saw our cat Fiona flash across the dining room.

Then I heard my husband shout out an expletive and yell, "There's a squirrel in the house!"

"What!!!! How the heck..." There was no time to talk about it as we saw this crazy squirrel run across the family room. My first reaction was to laugh but that didn't last long.

Thankfully all the kids were tucked away in their rooms, so I picked up the cat (the last thing we needed was a cat vs. squirrel showdown) and put her in our bedroom with the door closed.

You'd think that shooing a squirrel out the door wouldn't be too hard but I started to wonder if there are professional squirrel catchers out there because we needed help. That little vermin would not take the hint - GET OUT OF OUR HOUSE!

We'd chase it out from under the couch and it would run upstairs to hide under the recliners in the living room. Then we'd chase it out from there and it would leap down the stairs to go under the couch again. Repeat that about 15 times and you get the picture.

We tried trapping it in a blanket, shooing it toward the door with a broom, yelling at it to get it to run to the open door, and moving furniture to keep it from hiding, but to no avail. It was a master evader.

Finally after about an hour, the darn thing hid inside a stereo speaker (don't ask me how). My husband had to cut the speaker wire, carry the speaker to the front porch and literally shake it upside down for about 3 minutes to get that stubborn squirrel out.

Wow... talk about unwelcome guests. I don't know who was more traumatized, the squirrel or us.