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The Invasion Of The Body Squirrelers On:2009-01-16 04:54:47

The other week I ... I can hardly bring myself to tell you about it ... but ...but ...the other week I--I, I suffered an armed home invasion.

Oh the horror of it; the absolute (or at least relative) horror and the stress and the sturm and of course the drang of it all---you see it was an evil, violent squirrel that invaded my space, and, yes, it was armed---and legged and tailed too and viciously fluffy! and now I have PTSD, Post Traumatic Squirrel Disorder: and the slightest hint of a scrabbling noise, or the merest suggestion of anything furry hurling itself repeatedly and rather pointlessly at a closed window gives me a flashback; and yesterday someone at work quite innocently offered me a nut and I screamed and leaped under my desk, which wouldn't have been quite so painful if the underside of my desk wasn't already crowded with herds of computers---and those things have sharp edges!1

underneaththedesktop


I AM NOW A TOTAL RODENT-INDUCED WRECK!!!
No, no calm down me, calm down: take the nice pills---there's a good me.

Gulp!

[Pause]

(That pause, btw, was dedicated to the memory of the Late Great Harold [Pause] Pinter, as are all other [Pause] pauses heard [Pause] throughout this essay, even though he has never, to my knowledge, himself written about squirrels).

Whew! Anyway! That's better!
Yes, well if you haven't figured it out yet, I came home from work the other week, and there, hurling itself hysterically about my L-shaped downstairs, at random windows, was a squirrel. I of course immediately opened wide the front door and threw things at the bugger till it took the hint and left.

And the real horror (which I'm sure you haven't figured out yet) was that this scene was all too familiar. You see it's happened before---twice!:
First there was the sparrow; the one we all call 'Hardlyevermore' who, skipping the whole window-tapping, flirting thing (if not the fluttering) suddenly appeared, not on my bust of Pallas ('cause I don't actually have one), but down behind my bookcases. I've dwelt loathingly elsewhere on that ghastly event so we don't need to rehearse it here (not that hearses were involved in any way to begin with---not even little tiny sparrow hearses) and I escaped that time with little more than a broken shelf, some mussed books and a guano streaked car.

bigcactus

Then ...then, and far, far worse, there was the first, the original squirrel , the kamikaze squirrel whose cacticidal rage I deduced from its results in my flat, as it must have alternated between repeatedly hurling itself at my biggest, my prize, cactus and sinking its unkempt, ratty teeth into all the small and relatively defenseless other cacti that strew my windows, and all the while trying to brain itself on any remotely breakable objects it could find and screaming (if you'll excuse my lamentable squirrel accent) "ShshsYyyhhChchchckkk"2 which as the squirreliphones out there will tell you means "Death to the Great Satan! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! May your nuts fall off!"

I arrived at that earlier scene to find no visible culprit, just its wake, and it left me feeling ... so violated; and then, since cacti can fight back, and one at least of mine did, that blasted squirrel had the temerity to hide from me for two days before sneakily dying up in my bedroom in hopes, no doubt, of continuing its vendetta using biological warfare.3

smallcacti

chimchimenyetcExtensive research over the course of all three invasions has indicated that, in a vile travesty of Santa's recent activity, all three of the invaders had gained ingress by diving down my chimney---so I called Steve-the-New-Landlord (the original Ron-the-Landlord having passed on to a better place---I think it's in Garland or somewhere) ...Steve-the-New-Landlord who, completely ignoring my great suggestion involving really sharp blades fitted near the bottom of the chimney so I could make Squirrel McNuggets as they fell, instead boringly installed a hefty-looking metal lattice thing around the top. So unless the squirrels get some bolt-cutters I should be OK from here on in.

Cheerio for now
from
Richard Howland-Bolton



Notes:

1 In fact it got so bad that I started channeling D.H.Lawrence:
A squirrel came to my water trough on a cold, cold day and I in paja... Oh! No!-No!-No! Hold on; no it wasn’t a water trough (I don’t even own one); no it was my flat---my apartment---that it came to, and I couldn’t have been in 'paja...' anything as I had just come home from work; And now dammit, in what must be yet another side effect of PTSD, and I'd better stop before I move on to his lovely ladies' chatter.

2 I really screwed that up, for a more accurate rendering run your mouse over this 'ere piccy of Rowie's lug 'ole...

3 Well either that, or after all its cacus-eating and poke-receiving it needed a little lie down, and one thing just lead to another...





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