Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 13, 1994                   TAG: 9404130111
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

THINGS A BIT SQUIRRELLY AT EXTERMINATOR'S

Squirrels were born recently in the ceiling of an old garage rented by soft-hearted exterminator John H. Lanum III, owner of AAA Environmental Services.

He has long put up with the mother squirrel, even though she fusses as he sits at his desk.

Straw from her nest fell to a dark corner below, and a neighbor's cat wandered in and had three kittens in the fallen straw.

Then the baby squirrels fell from the ceiling into the lap of the nursing cat. She took them in as her own, even though she previously had expressed a hearty appetite for their mother.

John Lanum IV, his dad's pest-control partner, tried to return the little squirrels to their mama, but nope, they smelled too much like cats. She kicked them out again.

So the squirrels returned to the kitten chow line, and they've all been getting along famously ever since - cats, squirrels and exterminators, too.