Operation Chewed Wire. The squirrel situation in the Heights.

Public scourge of the Heights.

By Sergeant Major Murray, Field correspondent.

I have been saying this for years.

Nobody listens to a basset hound. You tell people something important, something that affects public safety, something that could save lives and property, and they look at you with that expression, you know the one, and they say "Murray, you're being dramatic" and then they go back to their coffee.

I am not being dramatic.

I am being prophetic.

On a quiet day not long ago, fire took what was left of a structure on West 19th Street, the old main street of the Houston Heights, the commercial spine of this neighborhood since before most of your grandparents were born. Only the facade was standing. The rest had already been knocked down. The official finding was suspected faulty wiring, and investigators could not say with certainty where it started.

rear black squeral.

Everyone nodded, said faulty wiring, and moved on.

I did not move on.

Because wire does not become faulty on its own. Something gets to it first. Something with teeth that never stop growing, a great deal of free time, and no supervision.

I have questions.

About the squirrels.

 Let me be clear about something. I do not dislike squirrels personally. Some of my most professionally adversarial relationships have been with squirrels of otherwise reasonable character. This is not personal.

This is structural.

Squirrels chew. It is what they do. Their incisors never stop growing, so they never stop gnawing, on everything, always, including the coating that keeps electrical wiring from doing what it very much wants to do, which is arc, spark, and ignite whatever dry material happens to be nearby.

And in the interest of full disclosure: I am a gnawer myself. Shoes. Table legs. Throw pillows. I understand the impulse better than anyone in this newsroom. I will not be taking questions about the Chief's boots.

The difference is that nobody has ever handed me a century-old neighborhood's worth of wiring and told me to have at it.

The Houston Heights may be the most vulnerable neighborhood in this city for exactly this problem. Consider the conditions. Century-old bungalows with original or near-original wiring runs. A mature tree canopy, the very canopy we celebrate, the one on the postcards, arching over every street like a green cathedral and connecting roofline to roofline like a squirrel highway with no speed limit and no tolls. Abandoned structures with wiring nobody has inspected since the Carter administration. And a squirrel population that has, in the entire history of this neighborhood, never once been asked to account for its activities.

I am asking now.

I was on patrol when the news came in. I was monitoring the perimeter, the back yard, specifically the section near the fence where suspicious activity has historically been concentrated, when the Chief came home smelling of smoke and carrying a camera. He had been on West 19th Street. He had been the only photographer there. He had already called it in.

I sat with this information for a long time.

Then I sat in a different spot and sat with it some more.

My conclusion: the Heights is burning slowly, one old wire at a time, and nobody is connecting the dots because the dots are up in the oak trees looking innocent and eating whatever they found up there.

I have documented their methods. I have logged their movements. I have pressed my nose to the fence line at considerable personal effort given my aerodynamic profile, and I have watched them operate with the confidence of an organization that has never once faced consequences.

In fact, I checked. The number of fines issued to squirrels in the City of Houston is zero.

That ends today.

 I did what any responsible journalist would do. I made a call. Specifically, the Chief made a call on my behalf, to the City's Urban Forestry Division, to ask who is responsible for the wildlife that lives in the canopy the city values so highly.

The canopy, I am told, is worth billions of dollars. That is a great deal of money to leave unsupervised, and under any reasonable reading of a steward's duty, someone owes this neighborhood an answer about what is living in it and what it is doing to the wires.

 This column serves as formal notice.

We see you.

We know what you're doing up there.

And we have a newspaper now.

I am formally calling on the Houston City Council to convene a special hearing on what I am designating Operation Chewed Wire, a comprehensive investigation into the role of the Heights squirrel population in the accelerating deterioration of electrical infrastructure in one of this city's oldest and most historically significant neighborhoods.

I am prepared to testify.

I have reviewed the relevant case law. I have consulted with colleagues in the field, specifically a shepherd mix on Cortlandt Street who has been tracking a cell operating out of the large pecan tree at the corner, and a terrier on Rutland who has firsthand intelligence on tunneling operations near a junction box that frankly should concern everyone. Their identities are being withheld for their protection.

My demands are as follows.

One. A full inspection of all abandoned facades and structures on West 19th Street and the surrounding commercial corridor for live or deteriorating wiring. This should have happened already. I should not have to be the one asking.

Two. A canopy audit. Yes, I said canopy audit. The tree canopy of the Houston Heights is a treasure and I will defend it with my life. It is also an unregulated transit corridor for an arboreal population that has demonstrated, repeatedly, that it cannot be trusted near infrastructure. These two facts can coexist.

Three. Accountability. I am not calling for extermination. I am not calling for relocation. I am calling for a conversation, conducted at the appropriate municipal level, with appropriate seriousness, about what is happening to the wiring in this neighborhood and who is responsible for it.

I have submitted this column as formal public comment. I expect a response within thirty days.

The Houston Heights Independent will be watching.

I will be watching.

From the yard.

From my spot by the fence.

With my nose pointed directly at the pecan tree.

— Murray

Staff Columnist & Chief of Security

Houston Heights Independent

Dispatches from the Command Couch

Murray’s testimony is available upon request. He is available most afternoons, schedule permitting, and requests that all City Council members be advised that he does not respond well to cats.