Man Versus Squirrel: The Reckoning

I wrote about Randy’s battle: Man Versus Squirrel back in the Summer.

It’s Winter now and his attitude toward the squirrel has shifted slightly. No matter how much he denies it.

Randy: Do you want to save these biscuits?

Me: Nah, they’re kind of burned (my mother’s secret recipe for canned biscuits. Cook them until the bottoms are black).

Randy, gathering up the slightly toasted biscuits: I know someone who would like them.

Me: I can’t believe you. YOU crack me up.

Randy: I didn’t say anything about the squirrel. These are for the birds.

Please note, HE brought the squirrel up, not me. 

Me: You’re feeding the squirrel, you know you are.

Randy: No, I’m not. Fuck that squirrel. I hate that squirrel. I hope it dies.

Me: You lie like a rug. You’re feeding the squirrel.

Randy: I would poison these biscuits and kill that squirrel if I didn’t think you’d blog about it.

Me: Hold on a minute. I have to write something down.

Me: If you hate the squirrel so much, then why do you stop or swerve when they run out in front of the car?

Randy: I only do that so you’re not traumatized.

He was grinning at this point. With Randy, a grin is an admission of guilt. He will deny this, but it’s true. Even Joey knows that. He will argue with his dad over something from the back seat of the car and if he is sure he is right, he’ll ask me “Mom, does he have that grin on his face”?

Pretty soon, the squirrel is going to have a name and a place at the dinner table.

 

 

33 Thoughts.

  1. “I would poison the biscuits and kill the squirrel if I didn’t think you’d blog about it.”

    That is amazing! Always be weary of the blog, Randy. Anything you say can and will be used against you for a good blog post.

    • You might want to reference Michelle’s prior posts regarding the two mice which invaded our humble abode recently. Of course, said rodents are a close cousin of the squirrel…only smaller and without the bushy tail.

      Alas, at Michelle’s directive, we established snapping mouse traps throughout the basement. Of course, she expected a daily update on the expected carnage.

      I can only surmise if the squirrel finds a way into the attic…well…it’ll be poison biscuits all around.

  2. Too funny. Randy is so sweet – in a strong macho kinda way. LOL I am sure he’s doing it “all for you”. What a great guy! And I am sure the squirrel is very happy as well. Why do I hear the theme song for Caddyshack in my head now?? I know that the critter in the movie was a gopher but still works for me…….

    • Thank you, Brenda. As Michelle succinctly illustrates, I do bluster quite a bit. Nonetheless, squirrels are destructive, flea infested varmints and I do discourage them taking up residence in our immediate perimeter.

      One more thing…they eat all the goddamned bird food!

  3. Craig Newmark advocates for squirrels on his website. We had some in the trees in front of our house in East Oakland, and Briana fed them some cashew butter I had gotten as a sample at my job and they totally freaked out and lost it. They were climbing up the screen door trying to get in. It was funny at first.

  4. What a nice dude! My dad hates squirrels… he tries to shoot them with a BB gun. Luckily the BBs aren’t very big… once he shot a centipede with his BB gun and it just bounced right off and the centipede walked away!

  5. My grandfather used to buy cheap sandwich cookies for the squirrels who came up to his back door to visit him. We were not allowed to eat these cookies. He did not buy us other cookies. They were all for the squirrels.

  6. My boyfriend has a similar smile. That guy can’t lie to save his life. He always has that smile on his face. You can tell when he’d trying to play a joke on you because it is next to impossible for him to get away with even the smallest fib.

    • haha..my first husband was like that. Randy can keep a straight face. It’s when he tries to keep up an end of an argument that he is on the losing end. So. you know..most of them.

  7. A squirrel is one of the many critters to invade our house. I blame my neighbor for that one. He’s from Australia and can’t understand why we Americans aren’t delighted to have such charming creatures (rodents) playing in our yards. So, he puts up feeders in the side yard between our two houses in order to enjoy some squirrel watching from his living room.

    The squirrel was one of the easiest varmints to get rid of. The exterminator told me just to put baking soda on the window sill, leave the window open and then shut it when I saw the tracks going out. Worked like a charm and it did not come back in (maybe it was intimidated by the troops of mice or the snake).

  8. True story (I swear I’m not making this up):

    I grew up in the middle of an oak forest. The oak forest was home to innumerable squirrels. At first we thought the squirrels were cute and charming. Then my parents realized that the squirrels were eating all of the birdseed. So they got a succession of increasingly complicated (read: expensive) “squirrel-proof” birdfeeders. I use quotation marks because the squirrels in our oak forest never, ever met a “squirrel-proof” birdfeeder they couldn’t outwit. My parents grew increasingly frustrated and decreasingly fond of squirrels.

    The last straw was when my mother discovered $100 worth of flower bulbs dug up, chewed on, and strewn around our patio. She decreed war on the squirrels and conscripted my father, but she also decreed that no squirrels should be permanently harmed or killed.

    My father decided that the solution was to trap the squirrels and deport them. He’d bait the trap with peanut butter, and if there was a squirrel in the trap when he checked it in the morning, he’d deposit trap + squirrel in the car I shared with my brother. Whichever of us used the car first had the unenviable job of driving across town and releasing the squirrel.

    The results? No obvious reduction in the number of squirrels molesting our birdfeeders. So my dad, ever the logical scientist, decided that we needed to have an objective way of distinguishing the squirrels we had trapped from those we hadn’t to see if any of the deported squirrels were making their way back to our neighborhood and re-offending. His solution was to buy a can of neon orange spray paint and mark the tails of the deported squirrels.

    We never did see an orange-tailed squirrel in our neighborhood. Maybe they all died of shame.

  9. Too funny. This is better than my sister’s Father In Law, who has waged WAR on squirrels. He’s taken his BB gun out, and they don’t exactly live in the country. Their neighbors, and their kids and pets, are pretty darn close!

    • My husband just throws water or bottles at them. Once he threw the head of a large sunflower which was hilarious to me because it was like he was delivering dinner to the squirrel.

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