Last January, I took my car into the Mazda dealership so they could figure out why my fan blower motor was making noise.  Dealer said the motor was shot.  $1,400 later (as they had to remove the entire dashboard to replace it) problem solved.  A week later while on the road, my mother-in-law calls me to tell me (imagine this in a severe Southern accent):

“Y’all need to get someone to check this car out.  The fan is making noise”

When I get home, I take it back to the dealer.  After a thorough examination, we discover the blower motor is packed full of acorns, leaves, and insulation from the firewall.  Squirrels were building a nest in the motor.  Fortunately the fix was cheaper but that prompted another challenge:  What to do about the squirrels?

My wife suggested parking the car in the barn, but it meant I’d have to trudge up there in the morning, pull the car out, close the barn door and then drive down the gravel road.  Kind of a pain.

I suggested dispatching the squirrels with a two-pronged strategy:  a 20 gauge shotgun and cats.

She agreed.  Reluctantly. 

So we got the gun.  And the cats,  Iris and Athena.  6 weeks old at the time.  I put some mesh around the front porch so they couldn’t get out and they adapted quickly to being outside cats, which was the goal. 

About a week later, I’m heading home from the West Coast and my wife texts me telling me Iris got attacked by something, probably a coon or another cat.  Vet is able to save her even though her head and face is torn up.  Total vet bill is $250.00. Iris is tough and begins to heal.  We consider renaming her ISIS due to her resilience but think better of it.

Now I reinforce the cat compound with heavy-duty plastic mesh and wood.  I also install a motion detector light and sleep with the blinds open on my bedroom window.  I have a small leftover baby gate so I put that on the steps leading up to the porch.  It’s my first line of defense.  That night about 2am I hear a crashing noise and the motion detectors go on.  I grab the shotgun and run out to see that coon on the porch.  He breached the gate and is heading toward the cats.  Unfortunately he runs off before I can get a shot off.  Can’t fall back to sleep so I’m dragging the next day. 

Next step is to reinforce the entire cat compound with chicken wire.  Heavy rains that night so no action from predators.  The next night though, the power goes out in the middle of the night and the coon returns.  I don’t hear the gate go down but when I wake up, I see the baby gate has been knocked over.  I think it scared the coon off but I’m worried I didn’t hear it.  I get a couple of cowbells from the local CO-OP and wire them onto the gate.   Last night was a big thunderstorm so no action but we’ll see what happens tonight.

And today I’m wondering if I would have been better off just parking the car in the barn.

Sometimes our solutions become more troublesome than our problems.  We build systems and structures to alleviate a minor pain at work.  We reorganize around or promote a difficult employee when we ought to just fire them. 

If the pain of the solution is greater than the pain of the original pain, we’ve screwed up.

I’m ok with Iris and Athena.  I think they’ll eventually become good hunters and be able to take on or at least escape a coon, but so far it’s been a challenge.

This week, look at your workarounds and see if they are more of a burden than the original problem.  If they are, ditch them and address the problem directly.  Might be a better strategy.