Little fluffy toes hiding sharp nasty claws. Cuteness disguising the vermin inside. Quizzical expressions covering diabolical intentions.
This is the the common tree squirrel. I know because my dog tells me so.
It is an empty feeling when one loses a war. Not may people experience this, but I have. Not a traditional war with guns and tanks and trenches, but a back yard war. A war against the rodent menace. And I've clearly lost this horrible war.
The first tactic - cutting off their supply lines. It was a valiant plan. Minimal casualties, mediocre effort. Cut the tree branches back to divert their aerial highway. How I underestimated the jumping abilities of the common tree squirrel. The original jumping gaps that were essential intersections of their daily supply line commutes were between two to four feet. Cutting them back to five or even six feet seemed to be a smart plan. However, when by chance one of the evil enemy was cornered in a tree during my trimming excursion, it proceeded to jump over ten feet to the farther tree to avoid my presence. Tactic #1 failed.
The second tactic - the Super Soaker. This was, I thought, a brilliant strategy on my part. Unfortunately I was to be shamed again. The issue arose as a result of my particularly smart canine companion. It took Mr. Milo less than a minute to connect the squirrel hunt to me holding the Super Soaker. As his passion for the squirrel hunt borders on rabid, his barking is unstoppable. Realizing that I was participating in this hunt, with my new Super Soaker, sent him into a frenzy that would start a lynch mob in my honor. If I lived in a more rural area this wouldn't have been an issue, but as my neighbor houses are quite close and his bark is quite piercing, I had to consider ramifications of pissed off neighbors. Tactic #2 failed.
And as an aside, the squirrels, while annoyed by being sprayed in the face with a Super Soaker, are so damn persistent that I would have lost this battle anyway. On the peak of the garage roof, the miniature monster pokes its head over the edge and I blast him in the face with water. The imbecilic creature then moves twelve inches to the right and pokes his head up again. I hit him in he face and he proceeds another twelve inches to the right. This continues to the end of the garage and the evil thing starts back the other way. Methodical, persistent and enduring. The bastard outlasted me. When I stopped to fill the Soaker he took advantage and escaped across his rooftop tree limb thoroughfare. Tactic #2 failed on two accounts.
The last tactic - the trap. And this was an incredibly conniving win on the side of the dreaded tree squirrel. Victory, or so I thought, was finally at hand. The trap was out, the nuts were in the trap, and unset, the squirrel menace was happily going in and out of the trap to get the nuts. Even pounding on the trigger level when the nuts were out. I trained them this way so that when I did set the trap door, they would already be accustomed to feeding from the trap. The day came and I set the trap with the trigger on and the door ajar. Boom! Right away the flea-bitten poor excuse for a mammal locked himself in. Victory was at hand! I had them trained and could relocate them far away at will!
Note to reader: Killing the squirrel menace was not an option in my mind. If I was an ornithologist and they were killing my birds that would be another story. But in this case I was just trying to save my apricots. I could not justify outright slaughter.
But... It didn't matter because my victory was at hand! I could see the end. The victory parade (just my dog and me). The end of the war and peace throughout the backyard.
This, however, is where the depth and deviousness of the dreaded tree squirrel comes to light. THEY HAVE THE LAW ON THEIR SIDE!!! We won't mention the fact that this is a human law. It is illegal to relocate a trapped squirrel! I can kill it (which is beyond my personal Geneva Convention rules), but I can't relocate it. Tactic #3 failed.
So I have lost. It was a hard fought war, and I hope beyond hope that the victorious squirrels have mercy on my apricots, but I have to surrender. They have won the war and I am defeated.
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