Oy, the squirrels

When I was a teenager, my dad loathed squirrels. He bought a lot of bird seed to fill his squirrel-proof bird feeders, and those pesky squirrels managed to outfox human engineering every time. The first time I truly understood the Fear and Loathing of Squirrels was three years ago, at Flea's son's birthday party.

Then last year, a squirrel chewed through the screen of my kitchen door and had a freakout when Ben discovered him. (I now know what squirrel poop looks like.) I had a freakout myself, of course. This summer, another squirrel came through the kitchen door. Squirrels have gnawed through the hard plastic below the windshield of my car. A week ago, after a window had inadvertently been left open a few inches, Ben and I went out to the car and found a squirrel wandering about the vehicle's interior.

We know squirrels have a taste for acorns, nuts, bird seed, and bread products. They also like to get their vitamin A, it seems, as they like to nosh on jack-o-lanterns.

Exhibit A: Jack-o-lantern on Halloween. It has been outside for less than six hours. One eye socket and one tooth have been nibbled, and the "lid" is missing.


Exhibit B: Jack-o-lantern on November 2, after 48 hours of squirrel exposure. It looks like the jack-o-lantern is a heavy meth user. Every tooth is gone, and the lips, such as they were, have been chewed off. A squirrel neurosurgeon appears to have performed a frontal lobotomy.