Squirrels, squirrels and more squirrels

I hate squirrels. They're everywhere in our pool porch. The little rascals have eaten through every crevice near the roof, made a house in the beam above our pool and have even eaten the lightbulbs hanging around the pool roof. We've tried everything to get rid of them, including seeking our two doberman pinchers on them. The squirrels just tease the dogs and run out of their reach.

But they keep coming back. My husband Ken decided it was time to start trapping them last week. So he baited two traps with peanut butter and pecans. Lo and behold, the next day we had a victim.

Now, we have had some long discussions on what to do with the squirrels once we catch them. My friend Kim Rose had a similar problem at her house. Being the good researcher that she is, she found pages of advice on the Web about how to humanely dispose of critters. The general consensus was dropping the cage in a trash can filled with water was the best way to send the creatures to heaven. We confirmed that advice with our neighbor, Tom, who is an animal researcher. He said, "yeah, drown those little suckers."

So with squirrel in cage, Kenny delicately dunked the cage into a trash can filled with water yesterday. To his horror, the critter came swimming up through the water, pressed against the cage door and flew out the cage, into the nearby tree and headed straight back to the pool porch. Note to Ken: put the cage door in first, next time.

After that trauma, Ken set two more traps and this morning we had two more victims. "It's going to be double-death Tuesday," he said. But after thinking it over, Ken decided he couldn't handle another drowning episode. So he asked a handyman who was working at our house to do the deed. He couldn't face the squirrels either, so they took a trip with him to High Springs.

If you have any ideas for getting rid of squirrels, please let me know. I don't know how many more squirrels we can transplant!