Night of the Squirrel

Friday night we got a visit from Foamy. Checking out a crash in in the bedroom, I noticed that quite a few things were knocked over and there was a hole in the ceiling. Then a blur of fur to my left caught my eye, and I did the girl thing and screamed, backed out of the room and shut the door. I couldn't tell what it was - raccoon, very big rat - and so stood trying to puzzle out what to do. Go back inside? Get a blanket to throw over it? Get a box? Just call someone? All this while, fabulous husband was yelling downstairs to a) see if I was alright and b) find out what was going on. Took me a minute or two to answer. "I don't know. There's something in our room." "What's in our room." "Just said I don't know. There's fur involved."He advised calling animal control.
I was down stairs trying to get in touch with animal control - which conveniently keeps normal business hours - when friend Kelly arrived. "We have an intruder" quote the husband gravely, and from the crashing noises upstairs it really could have been anything or anyone. I finally called AAA Wildlife control who's done work for us in the past with raccoons in the walls. Their emergency service, however, is really expensive and without guarantee. As I repeated after the woman "$225 to have the tech come out??" fabulous husband drew a sword and headed upstairs. "I think we're dealing with it ourselves" I said. Kelly blanched and said "I'm getting port" and ran out.
I couldn't take it. Mice - okay, I've killed mice. But a raccoon? Some part of my mind registered it as a houseguest, and I ran and got a cat carrier and a towel, actually believing this would be helpful. I stood outside the bedroom door and was informed it was a fucking squirrel. Fast, agile squirrel. No way were we catching it. It sounded like it was running along the walls, which, apparently, it was and occasionally the door would rattle as though an exorcism was going on on the other side. I suggested that perhaps if we opened the window, it would just leave. Fair enough, any creature would want to get away from the very large man with sword, right? Large sigh on the other side of the door, clatter of sword being put down and eventual sounds of window opening. We don't have good windows and this took some doing, but sure enough the little thing leapt over the whole room and right out of the window.
I opened the door to survey the damage. Everything which had been up was now down. Everything that had been down was on it's side - like a bizzarro universe version of how it had been left. The hole is now plugged and hopefully the squirrel had a bad enough time that our house will become a folk legend in their community, a story to frighten little squirrels into eating their nuts...