Fuzzy tailed rats running rampant

Fuzzy tailed rats running rampant
                        

On a hot, late August afternoon my next-door sister, Sandy, caught me in the garden with a weathered rat trap and a spool of bailing wire. For a moment we eyed each other speechlessly through the decimated remains of my carefully cultivated Indian corn.

“Rats?” she asked politely while already knowing full-well the truth of my intent.

“Well, not actual rats,” I said, casting my eyes to the ground.

“Oh no,” she said. “You’re out for the squirrels aren’t you?”

“Sandy, look at my corn,” I said defensively. “The little vermin have already taken nearly every ear.”

“They’re just trying to make a living you know.”

“This is not a living. This is terrorism, plain and simple,” I sniped. “I’ve got a crop to raise here.”

The small stand of Indian corn — just a few dozen plants — had become my annual tradition several years before when an Amish friend offered me some of the seed stock he’d been cultivating for 60 years from a single ear gifted him by a fellow young schoolboy. In years past the plants had grown to form a dense, green, 10-foot-high barrier along the property line between my pole beans, collards and kale, and Sandy’s swimming pool just over the fence. This year the squirrels had shredded the plants at ear-height over the course of just a few late August days.

“Still, John, you shouldn’t kill the poor things,” she said.

“Kill?” I laughed. “I couldn’t kill a squirrel with one of these old things even if he surrendered, confessed and laid his neck across it. I was planning to rig the trap into a tiny catapult to fling the varmints out of my garden to teach them a lesson.”

“Still, it seems a little cruel is all,” she said as she turned and faded beyond the corn to carefully skim a stinkbug off the surface of the water and gently set it free.

The encounter got me thinking as to why I had never found the need to take up arms against the squirrels in years past. That reason had been a short, fast, wire-furred mess of a mutt named Ruby who made clear to the entire neighborhood her life’s greatest passion was chasing squirrels from the yard. The varmints fled Ruby’s advance as flies from a swatter, circling back in through the trees in endless paths of approach. Rarely did the mutt ever lay tooth to a squirrel, but just as rarely did a squirrel lay tooth to my precious corn. The dance was constant and never ending. With Ruby’s passing not long after last year’s harvest, the era of the “squirrel patrol” came to an end.

Our new dog, Frankie, sees each squirrel as just another potential relationship. If squirrels were apt to chase sticks and sniff butts, Frankie would probably have a dozen new best friends by now.

I decided to walk away from the battle this year. With a single good ear of Jonas’ Indian corn in hand, I was assured of next year’s planting, and I’ve got a good long winter ahead to figure out how to keep the varmints from picking me dry.

Kristin and John Lorson would love to hear from you. Write Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John at jlorson@alonovus.com.


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