I have been at war with fiend squirrel for almost two years now. Each year, I plant a summer garden, eagerly looking forward to the fresh tomatoes and pumpkins I’ll have come late summer. And every year, as I go out to pick the tomatoes, I find little bite marks, left by my nemesis. Last fall, I made the mistake of storing my ripened pumpkins on the back deck–until one day, Kelly jumped up and yelled, “get away, squirrel!” By the time she’d raised the alarm, fiend squirrel had chewed big holes into two of my finest pumpkins. And later that fall, he managed to crawl into my garage, where I was storing some flour and chew into that.
As I saw him scamper along the top of the fence, I swore to myself that I would someday catch that squirrel, and when I did, I would eat him, thus annihilating my enemy. But Loretta, who had a fiend squirrel of her own, and a boyfriend with an aversion to killing animals, called me on this vow when she captured her enemy in a humane trap. She offered her fiend to me, so I could kill, skin, and roast him as fine practice for the day I would do it with my own enemy. Sadly, the thought of killing a quite-possibly-rabid rodent with long teeth intimidated me, and I had second thoughts about noshing on a probably-diseased corpse, even if I did roast it beyond well done. And so both her fiend and mine lived on through the winter.
This year, fiend squirrel escalated the war. I had bought some seeds and carefully placed them in some peat moss for sprouting. None of them sprouted–because fiend squirrel found the peat moss, and dug up and ate my seeds. Wallowing in my hatred of fiend squirrel, I had to buy more expensive pre-sprouted plants at a nursery. Meanwhile, pumpkin seeds which fiend squirrel had dropped while fleeing from Kelly sprouted in all sorts of awkward places, such as a half-broken planter next to the pool. And, yes, as soon as my tomatoes and cucumbers ripened, I found fiend squirrels characteristic bite marks in them.
And then fiend squirrel did the final insult and moved himself into my home. He found a way into the attic. When he interrupted my sleep, I ran up to turn on the attic light and yell. This technique, quite effective in Soviet prisons and elsewhere, dissuaded the field for only a few days–whereupon he moved on top of my home office. As I worked away, I heard an incessant scritch, scritch, scritch, with drove me mad. I bought rat poison, which fiend squirrel snacked on like it was fine food, with no apparent ill effect.
So I went back to the hardware store and asked for help. I got some notorious advice from a fellow squirrel-hater. He told me to buy some bird seed, which squirrels love, and some dry plaster of paris, and then to spread out the bird seed in a tray and coat it with the dry plaster of paris. It might take a few days, but fiend squirrel would be gone from the attic. “It’ll stop him right up,” his colleague said. And we all laughed evilly at the new plot.
Peter was highly skeptical, but it didn’t cost much to try. And sure and enough, less than 2 days later the scritch-scritch is gone. Peter thinks it may have been due more to the fact that he was playing a video game, and the constant sound of gunfire inspired fiend squirrel to evacuate. But in either case, I’m happy. For now, at least, fiend squirrel is gone.