I just realized that I forgot to tell everyone about my wife's extremely traumatic experience on Sunday, and trust me, you need to hear this, because it was absolutely freaking hilarious it may have scarred her for life, so if you run into her and say the wrong thing ("How do you feel about squirrels?") and she stabs you, you'll at least know why.

Last week, we kept hearing sounds in the vents above the TV room. We assumed that Poly, who likes sitting next to the vent in the bedroom right above us, was rubbing her scent onto the vent and causing noises to reverberate throughout the house. We...were...wrong.

Sunday afternoon I had a concert to sing in Dover, so we left around 2. Concert went fine, as usual, because I am the bomb. Sarah, meanwhile, was sitting on the couch, working on choreography (definition: "the study of choral graphics and their effects on seizure victims"), watching a little TV, waiting for my sister to show up so they could hang. Suddenly, Veronicat (aka The Cheat), our psychopathic calico feline, came flying (not literally, as she is very fat) into the room, chasing something that Sarah first assumed was another of our four cats.

Violent predator? Or tasty snack?

Sarah realized it was not a cat, but in fact a squirrel, when it jumped up on one of our purple chairs and charged straight at her. Thinking quickly, she chose a non-standard defense: screaming like Kyle did when we waxed his ass, and hiding under her blanket. Veronicat, who is now Official Hearndom Badass, cornered the squirrel in the bathroom. Sarah took a moment to compose herself and change into clean knickers, and called her father. Then she peeked into the bathroom to see what was going on; the squirrel had managed to wedge himself into a space between the sink and the wall, an opening of about one inch. Veronicat was hovering nearby, waiting for her chance to make lunch of him. While Sarah was contemplating him, he twitched his tail menacingly, causing her to scream again and run upstairs to hide under the bed, where she whimpered softly until her father could get there and sort things out.

Before he did, though, my sister Liz arrived, found out what was going on, and stationed herself in the broom closet.

Then Charles finally arrived, bearing with him a couple pieces of plywood to block off the path of the squirrel and force him to run out the front door. Sarah locked up the cats, and she and Liz took positions with a rake and a broom to defend themselves. Charles put on a thick pair of gloves and reached in after the squirrel, which took one look at his eyebrows and ran, terrified, out the front door, never to be seen again.

The excitement over at the House of Hearn is unending.