Rose Team: Force Of One

Dear Troops,

While you, much loved military folks are fighting the good fight and wearing sexy camo, I am in my pajamas with my super soaker plotting my next squirrel attack.

First though, let me say that I love animals. I have dogs and cats and I would have more because that would mean I would have more 'co workers' who didn't care that I 'wore clothes that were tank tops and pajama bottoms'.

Squirrels are another matter. The squirrels around here f*k with me. They are clever and cruel. One time, I spent good money on a squirrel proof bird feeder so I could watch birds eating in the bleak month of January. I put it up and the next day, it was gone. A trail of PREMIUM birdseed trailed off into the woods. Do NOT try to tell me it was neighborhood hooligans bird feeder stealing. I need only to drag my bat of justice down their sidewalk and smile while taking practice swings. Okay, there is one hooligan. I think he is on his way to prison or Boysville or wherever they send sociopaths in training these days.

I saw a squirrel walking slowly across the road today, so full of nuts and my pumpkins, it was all but staggering across the street. At this point in the nut gathering season, they can barely make it up trees. Sometimes they need a coupla running jumps. Then when leap from branch to branch you think a pterodactyl has landed they are so huge. I am talking big domestic cat, small dog sized.



In my constant efforts to give the squirrels boundaries, I have in a token of kindness, bought a pumpkin just for them to destroy, eat, roll in. I am not saying I know much about what squirrels do besides piss me off. They prefer the intricate and not so intricate patterns that we carve onto our pumpkins. I cannot be sure but they like mine the best. After a coupla days of running to the pumpkin and checking it out briefly, then running away, they start getting cocky.

They roll the pumpkins down the hill that is my front yard. In squirrel, that is akin to laughing in my face. This year, they had a 2 course meal with corn shucks. Yea, its on.

They also seem to like hot sauce alot. Because I sprayed the pumpkins with tobasco and if anything, they ate more and rolled more down the hill. We have black squirrels around here too, before I thought they were an exotic species who specialized in eating pumpkins. However, black squirrels are just like black.

Squirrel combatants is what this civilian is dealing with.