Fox Urine

“What you need to do is squirt some of this fox urine onto a piece of cardboard. That’ll get the squirrels outa there fast.”

This is what the guy at the camping store tells me. His name is John.

“It beats using a squirrel cage,” he adds, handing me the package. “You gotta use their own instincts against them.”

I read the directions on the back:

Spray ten to fifteen drops of authentic fox urine onto scent wick. Place wicks onto trail. The fox urine will mask human scent. Deer may even follow the trail straight to your hunting blind!

“So, they use this for hunting in the woods?” I ask.

“Yep,” says John, “Gets the deer every time.”

John assures me the stuff will work in a duplex too.

When I get home, I tear a sheet of cardboard into six pieces and saturate each piece with urine. The odor is strong and rank. My cat approaches to see what I’m doing and her tail bushes out with suspicion. She skitters away when the exhaust from a city bus fires.

Before I open the door to the attic, I listen. Usually they’re up there chasing each other across the loft. They sound like midget ballerinas, tumbling around on the floorboards. They’re quiet now, taking an afternoon nap.

Apprehensive, I enter the stairwell. They’ve torn the insulation to shreds. I’m worried that they’ll jump out at me from above. Rabid squirrels. Tenement squatters. Creepy fast moving things.

I don’t sense any movement but my own, though, and so I proceed. I lay the cardboard shims at regular intervals across the splintered floor. “Yaaaghh!” I scream out, hoping to scare them off, “Yaaaghh!”

There are clumps of insulation everywhere. Strands of it hang from the ceiling, rustling with each scream and bending shadows around my peripheral vision.

The next morning, the sun breaks into my bedroom. I awaken, sweating. This is usually their peak time for dancing, for their bony graceless rapping on the floor.

Today, it’s silent.

Confidence grips me, draws me out into the kitchen to fix myself a pot of coffee. I’m spooning out the grounds when I hear a quick clattering noise from above. I stop to listen, but hear nothing, so I turn the faucet on to fill the pot. Again, a loud clack-clack, clack-clack. It sounds like someone tap-dancing up there.

I turn the faucet off. Clack-clack. Clack-clack. Clack-clickety-clickety-clack. I open the attic door and edge myself up along the stairwell to peep over the ledge.

Clack-Clack. Clickety-Clickety-Clack Clack.

Peering into the darkness, I see nothing at first. Then gray shapes separate from the surrounding blackness. A sharp breath sounds, then a turn – click-clackety. A full-grown buck swivels towards me, a tuft of insulation hanging from his left antler.

“Yaaaghh!” I scream, and am afraid. This is a kamikaze deer, with no hope of survival up here. It’s got nothing to lose.

“Yaaaghh!” I scream again. It’s looking at me like it knows something I don’t know. I raise my arms above my head, trying to make it appear as if I have antlers. Then I run downstairs and slam the door.

The walls here are like cardboard.

My downstairs neighbor is banging on the ceiling. Through the pipes I hear him screaming. “Cut out that racket! What the hell are you doing up there?”