Living Rich on Less | Decorating, organizing, home & life improvementLiving Rich on Less | Decorating, organizing, home & life improvement

You may recall, I’ve recently been sprucing up the outdoor spaces around our home. I started with a super-thrifty patio re-do and then I worked on the landscaping around our lamppost. (By the way, thanks for your helpful comments regarding my plants. Because of you, they may have a shot at survival! )

I’ve been downright tickled with these upgrades to our curb appeal. So you can imagine my confusion as I pulled into the driveway yesterday and this is what caught my eye:

Apparently, while I was out of town on Air National Guard duty, the mister was working on Mission: Squirrel Eradication. You see, since last year, we’ve had this problem of squirrels somehow making it into our attic, taking up residence there, and partying like it’s 1999. (Seriously, that’s what it sounds like.)

So the hubs bought the above contraption and started luring the critters in with peanut butter. I asked him why he set up the trap outside the house considering there are about a million squirrels in our neighborhood that might like a bite of peanut butter. But he’s assured me this will work.

According to his “research,” squirrels won’t return to the same location if they are dropped off at least five miles away. Over the weekend, he trapped two of the buggers, spray-painted the tips of their tails white (no, I’m not kidding) and released them into the wild five miles away from our house.

So if you’re a local reader enjoying a picnic in the woods and you notice a painted squirrel, you’ll know why.

You won’t see this stuff in Better Homes and Gardens …

What would you do to get rid of the squirrels? I’m going to take a hard look around the attic to see if I can spot an entrance hole somewhere and plug it. But, then again, what’s the fun in that?

I recently stumbled upon a thought-changing podcast featuring Rory Vaden, best-selling author of Take the Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success. In the podcast, Rory explained that, as humans, we are inclined to take the path of least resistance in life. (Guilty here.) He then offered a really cool analogy illustrating how procrastination inevitably leads us to more pain and problems.

In the Colorado Rockies, most storms come from the west and head eastward. Apparently, buffaloes and cows respond very differently to these oncoming storms.

When cows see a storm approaching, they run in the opposite direction from it. Unfortunately for them, they aren’t the fastest thing on cloven hooves. As the storm catches up with them, the cows fail to realize they are actually now running with the storm, prolonging the amount of time they have to endure the inclement weather.

Buffaloes, on the other hand, actually run directly toward a storm when they see it coming, so it passes over them quickly and their exposure is limited.