sewer squirrel

We had some interesting times over the break. What follows is one of them. Monday morning of the week after Christmas, Brian headed out the front door, and I went into the bathroom to look in the mirror. Once in there, I heard some scratching/gnawing sounds. I wondered if Brian might be working on something on the house, perhaps trimming back some of the vines that threaten to cover the entire exterior. However, I could kind of trigger the scratching/gnawing by walking around on the bathroom floor. It pretty much sounded like it was coming from right behind our sink. But I held on to hope. Brian came inside, and I inquired about any possible exterior work. Nope. So I led him to the bathroom to investigate. Brian agreed that it was either in the pipes or in the wall. He informed me that there are pipe vents on roofs and the squirrel (or whatever) likely fell in that way. Just a question -- Why wouldn't those vents have mesh coverings on them? So there we were. What can you do? It's not like you can start taking apart pipes -- who wants a wild sewer squirrel running around their house? We hoped he might find his way through our pipes and find an escape route once he cleared our house. A while later the sounds ceased. Things seemed to be going okay until evening when I flushed the toilet (which contained nothing clog-worthy) and it started to back up. I quickly turned off the water and avoided a mess. Everything upstairs still seemed to be working fine. I wondered whether this was because it was actually on a different system of pipes or simply because there was more length of pipe to fill. Tuesday morning I showered and then Brian showered (upstairs). Partway through his, I noticed water on the floor of the main floor bathroom. And by the time he was finished, the floor was quite covered and there was some nasty backup in the tub there. It also smelled horrible. I promptly called StarDrain. They said someone would be out that afternoon. Fifteen minutes later, out of nowhere, the tub drained and the toilet flushed. Problem solved! Apparently all the pressure in the pipes and from the tub filling finally pushed the little guy out. Of course we were still cursed with a lot of cleanup, but we were pleased to be able to get out of the house -- and away from the smell -- to meet some friends for lunch.