Monday, November 19, 2012

Getoffamylawn!

I am not much of an animal person--dogs not-included-- (though I have been known to be a bug Buddhist every now and again and set the occasional spider free rather than kill it) so I find the unmitigated gall of the neigborhood squirrels to be... well unittigatingly galling.  Every year around this time, these fat shiny tree rats spend the last two months of the summer eating walnuts from my neighbor's tree (which hangs over my driveway) leaving a huge mess to clean, then once they have denuded that food source, they move over to MY back yard and start eating my avocados....

Now I wouldn't mind sharing with the fuzzy little creatures, but they are not sharers. they subscribe to the "if I lick this, then no one else will eat it" school of scavenging.  They take several bites from the luscious fruit, throw it to the ground and move on to another one.  Later they come back to the ones on the ground and finish them off.  grrrr... well, not before I have to clean up the dozens of discarded nibbled fruits they've cast aside for later or I will step in them and track them in the house.

what's more, when I walk out into my own back yard, they stand in the tree, twitching their fat shiny tails, and chatter angrily at me-- as if they were the old man in those old films that was saying "get offa my lawn you good fornuthin kids!"

A friend of mine said to me once, "Well, they were here first" to which I replied, "yes, but they're not paying the mortgage, I am..."

Well, I will have the last word! my avocado tree is dying and soon the squirrels will have to go squat in someone else's tree and cuss at them.

Sigh... sounds like we both lose on this one.


6 comments:

  1. Hahaha! This is great Carole! I actually used to give my squirrels shelled peanuts to appease them...they stopped crunchin' on my stuff, and enjoyed the peanuts instead...and the shell casings they left were just good mulch for the yard....and there ya have it!

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    1. Yeah, like Im going to reward their little squirrely delinquent behavior... I know them. they would take the peanuts AND the avocados...

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  2. Oh...btw...that last comment was me, Nanci Schwartz...GetOuttaMyHead is my blog...but it's old and I haven't taken very good care of it....guess I'd better get out the dusting rag!

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  3. Oh Carole I feel your pain! It's exactly the way I feel about the deer at our place! My father in law used to put tin around the bottom of the tree so the squirrels couldn't climb up...and I think it worked. I will find out for sure.

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    1. So are squirrels afraid of pales? or is it something in which to throw their discards? I don't think they will do it if its the second... and if its the earlier, they hop from my garage roof to the tree... no ground is involved, until they go to collect the remains

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  4. This is my favorite! So glad to have a place to go to see your sense of humor and talent. The kids loved it too.

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