Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Motherf**king Squirrels

So! In recapping my weekend, on Friday my car dropped dead and on Saturday I was under surveillance by a guy standing on the struts of a helicopter. I was hoping the weekend would get a little less ........ strange.

On Sunday afternoon, I decided to do some garden stuff, and I needed to get in the shed. I reached for the shed padlock key, which is in a secret undisclosed outdoor location, and ...... the shed key was gone.

Now, the reason the shed key was kept outdoors was because I used to share the shed with another tenant. Seeing as how he moved out some time ago, and nobody else wanted the shed space, I could have taken the key inside, but somehow I just never got around to it. And now the key was gone.

The thing is, my craft show tables are in that shed, and I was supposed to do a show this weekend (oops! Make that next weekend - see below), so I really needed to get into that shed, sooner rather than later. I took a look at the hasp on the door, thinking maybe I could just unscrew it off the door, and .... not. Not enough of the screws were accessible. I decided I would wait until Tuesday, and ask the opinion of the guys at work. Crowbar, maybe? Boltcutters? I figured if worse came to worst, I could always just call a locksmith. Yeah. More money down the freakin' drain.

I finally decided to wait a few hours, until the guys who live downstairs got good and drunk (safe bet; they do this every single day), and ask for their help. Because drunk guys are always more cooperative than sober ones.

So about eight o'clock Sunday night (yes, they are drunk by eight. and passed out cold by ten thirty), I went downstairs, explained my problem, and J., one of the downstairs guys, told me to get a hammer and a screwdriver and meet him at the shed. And he worked the screwdriver under the hasp, gave it a good hard pop with the hammer, and that hasp flew off that shed door. The entire operation took all of twenty seconds. Thanks, J.!

Of course, then there was a whole other saga of finding a new hasp and a padlock that would fit through the hasp opening and blahblahblah .......... but! Back to my point!

I am fairly certain that the motherf**king squirrels made off with that shed key. I think they visited the secret undisclosed shed key location, knocked the key off its perch and onto the ground, and either carted the key off themselves or left that job to the crows. (Look! Something shiny!) Because the squirrels in my neighborhood are assholes.

I long ago gave up birdfeeding, because the goddam squirrels were able to break the code of any "squirrel-proof" feeder I put up. Now I just feed the finches (squirrels don't like finch seed) and the hummingbirds (ditto, hummingbird juice).

I had a set of deer antlers mounted on my back porch, and a while ago I noted the the antlers were often .... askew. I thought maybe the wind was blowing them around, and I'd reach up, adjust them, and go on my merry way. But the other night I was doing dishes, and I looked out the window, and there was a squirrel perched on the antlers, chewing away. I went out, shooed the squirrel away, and discovered that the squirrels had been chewing chunks out of the antlers. Yep, chewing right into solid bone.

WTF? Why? It's not like it's the dead of winter here and they're starving to death. They've never bothered the antlers before. What up?

Motherf**king squirrels.

Oh, and it is of course possible that I forgot to replace the shed key the last time I used it, and it got left in my jeans pocket, and made a trip to the laundromat and ended up in the bottom of the washing machine. But I'm sticking this one on the squirrels. Because they're birdseed-eating, antler-chewing assholes.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Squirrels are irritating, but the antler thing is easily explained. They're rodents. Rodents gnaw things to keep their teeth from taking over their heads. Their teeth keep growing throughout their life, so they have to file them off by gnawing on something hard...and their teeth keep growing because otherwise the gnawing behavior would leave them without teeth. A real squirrel catch 22.

rockygrace said...

Do they ever gnaw on wood? Like, say, the lumber that decks are made of? I'm just wondering if I'm going to have a bigger problem now that I took the antlers down.

listie said...

Right now I'd take squirrels over the motherf**king, fat assed woodchuck that's eating everything in my yard. He and the smart-assed deer act like my yard's a freakin' all-you-can-eat salad bar.

Unknown said...

We haven't had any problems with them gnawing on our porch lumber, but it's all painted and they may just not like the taste of paint. I think that they don't tend to chew anything that they can't get their whole mouth around, but anything I don't want them to mess with, I put some hot sauce on a cotton ball and rub it around. I've also heard that peppermint oil works, but I never tried that. I solved my dig-out problem (squirrels observe you digging and planting flats of stuff and go behind you and dig it up to see what kind of goodies you buried, leaving your plants pell-mell on the surface with their roots exposed) by putting cayenne pepper around it. They really hate hot sauce.

The only real solution for woodchucks is a .22 and I'd probably use a .243 or a 30/30 for a deer. However, as you are probably not willing to put a slug in the bastards, run run run to Lowes, Home Despot, or WalMart and pick up some Ro-pel. Buy it in the gallon size because you'll be using a lot of it. Spray down anything they are eating and spray it liberally every time it rains. Pretty much you're going to be spraying every time you do a walkaround to look at how pretty things look now that the woodchucks are leaving it alone.

the queen said...

I embrace you, RockyCat. Motherfuckers.

rockygrace said...

Thanks for stopping by, queen!