Two Dead Squirrels Is Not Enough
On Friday morning I had a little less than 3 hours to get ready for our trip to the beach before it was time to pick up the kiddies. In addition to finishing the laundry, cleaning up, vacuuming and packing, I decided that since the lawn was rather shaggy and the next opportunity to mow it (now at 5 days and counting) was unclear, I’d better at least mow the front so that the average passerby wouldn’t note our name on the door and equate it with “white trash.” I have previously described (at ridiculous length) my tolerance/hate relationship with the mower. However, when I approached it on Friday morning, I noticed that something was amiss. The disgusting, revolting, annoying, creepy, bizarro, scraggily squirrels had chewed through the gas cap on the mower. Just as I feel perfectly justified making fun of my siblings but am instantly filled with rage when anyone else does it, I feel perfectly justified in hating the mower, until some filthy rodent comes near it.
I decided I’d better check around the car port (that’s right, I said car port) to determine if anything else had been chewed. And that is when I found the cement floor littered with the tiny black chewed up remnants of what had once been the seat to my bicycle. The immediate result of this discovery was blinding rage, quickly followed by the realization that I was now going to have to carve enough time from my three free hours to find a place in the shed for all of the bicycles and toys that I didn’t want the squirrels to eat.
To me the shed has always been the no-man’s-land of our marriage, because the shed is where we keep things that are either 1) big and heavy or 2) related to landscaping chores, neither of which is my area of responsibility. We lived for two years in a house with a shed that I visited exactly twice (in the same day when the HP was away), once to get the snow shovel and once to put it back. While I was willing to take on the HP’s closet while he was gone, I really hoped the shed would not need my attention because it is a bit of a disaster area.
Anyway, you can imagine my good humor as I attempted to load three bikes, a stroller, and all of the toys that were scattered around into the already full and disorganized shed. Once I’d finally locked up everything that a stupid squirrel would want to chew on, I went out to mow, where I realized that one end of the yard was littered with small leafy branches. The branches obviously were ripped from the tree and dropped to the ground while the same weirdo squirrels that ate my bike seat were attempting to build themselves a little love nest. As you can imagine, I could really see the humor in the situation when, pressed for time as I was, the rodents who delayed my start then made it impossible for me to accomplish anything without first cleaning up the yard.
When I finally managed to bag up all of the branches and sticks, I had about 45 minutes left to mow the lawn, shower, load the car, and pick up the kids. And right about then was when my rage turned homicidal (I was even willing to put up with additional visits from the redneck squirrel remover if it meant a reduction in the pest population). Unfortunately, I am rather nonviolent. Even though I would love to run down some of the young idiotic squirrels that are always dashing out in front of my car, I’m just not that kind of girl. Instead, bad ass that I am, I left the mower and the gas can out in the car port, in hopes that the moronic pest would come back to chew some more and keel over in the process. None did.
I decided I’d better check around the car port (that’s right, I said car port) to determine if anything else had been chewed. And that is when I found the cement floor littered with the tiny black chewed up remnants of what had once been the seat to my bicycle. The immediate result of this discovery was blinding rage, quickly followed by the realization that I was now going to have to carve enough time from my three free hours to find a place in the shed for all of the bicycles and toys that I didn’t want the squirrels to eat.
To me the shed has always been the no-man’s-land of our marriage, because the shed is where we keep things that are either 1) big and heavy or 2) related to landscaping chores, neither of which is my area of responsibility. We lived for two years in a house with a shed that I visited exactly twice (in the same day when the HP was away), once to get the snow shovel and once to put it back. While I was willing to take on the HP’s closet while he was gone, I really hoped the shed would not need my attention because it is a bit of a disaster area.
Anyway, you can imagine my good humor as I attempted to load three bikes, a stroller, and all of the toys that were scattered around into the already full and disorganized shed. Once I’d finally locked up everything that a stupid squirrel would want to chew on, I went out to mow, where I realized that one end of the yard was littered with small leafy branches. The branches obviously were ripped from the tree and dropped to the ground while the same weirdo squirrels that ate my bike seat were attempting to build themselves a little love nest. As you can imagine, I could really see the humor in the situation when, pressed for time as I was, the rodents who delayed my start then made it impossible for me to accomplish anything without first cleaning up the yard.
When I finally managed to bag up all of the branches and sticks, I had about 45 minutes left to mow the lawn, shower, load the car, and pick up the kids. And right about then was when my rage turned homicidal (I was even willing to put up with additional visits from the redneck squirrel remover if it meant a reduction in the pest population). Unfortunately, I am rather nonviolent. Even though I would love to run down some of the young idiotic squirrels that are always dashing out in front of my car, I’m just not that kind of girl. Instead, bad ass that I am, I left the mower and the gas can out in the car port, in hopes that the moronic pest would come back to chew some more and keel over in the process. None did.
posted by Shannon at 10:28 PM
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