Tag: Back Yard Wild Kingdom

Damn You, Rodents!

I’m covering a day shift at my mother’s house today as I slowly get back into the swing of that thing. Today is trash day, so I put the barrels out on the street last night so that I wouldn’t have to worry about them this morning.

The squirrels get into my trash barrels all the time, but they have never staged an attack while they were on the street. Until today that is.

The damage wasn’t bad, but one barrel was open and there was a small amount of trash scattered across the front yard. When I went outside to fix things I found two squirrels, three chipmunks and a handful of various birds checking out the wreckage.

Oh good, now the squirrels are cluing the rest of the wild kingdom into the buffet that is the crap we throw away. It’s like some perverse Disney cartoon.

Damn you, rodents. Fuck you, squirrels. We have foxes, bobcats, hawks, owls, and on one occasion a coyote living in the woods behind our house. None of those super predators eat squirrels? Come on, assholes. Control our rodent infestation!

Suck it Rodent

I took the trash out. When I got outside one of the empty garbage barrels was knocked over. There were two squirrels hiding behind it. One saw me coming and ran for the woods. The other didn’t see me. I was able to walk right up to the barrel and kick it. The barrel, not the squirrel. I kicked the barrel into the squirrel and damn if that wasn’t a satisfying experience.

Effin rodent wants to scatter my trash all over the yard? Effin rodent wants to eat all of the bird seed? Screw you, squirrel! The barrel rolled right over the prick. Damn that felt good.

Springing

Spring hasn’t sprung yet, but it is springing.

I think I say this every year, but maybe this year I’ll get new bird feeders. Maybe this year I’ll just get a second double post with a second squirrel baffle and a second pair of feeders and feed twice the number of birds.

Probably not, but maybe.

I Hate Squirrels

Bastards. Little furry rodent adorably cute bastards. Squirrels. The bane of my existence.

Jen and Harry like to have bagels for breakfast now and then. Today is Instacart day so Jen included a bag of bagels in the grocery order. The delivery came and in good social distance practice they left it outside on the steps. There were only a few minutes between the delivery and me going out to get it, but that was enough time for a couple of squirrels to rip open the bag of bagels and have at it.

Damn you, squirrels! First my bird seed, now my bagels? Is there no end to your evil? Will the torment never end?

Ouch

I’ve cut one little section of the front yard. My back is terribly unhappy with me.

I’m sitting on the back patio, watching Agents of Shield on my iPad as the wind whips through the very tall grass. In the woods in front of me there are three turkeys hanging out. In the woods to my right there are three or four kids exploring the wilderness.

I’m curious to see if they meet up.

Things are Getting Weird, Explained

Okay, here’s the dish, along with lots of back story that you’ll find boring and will probably make you stop reading before you get to the actual weird.

Back story #1 – The wood stove.

When we were kids, my parents had a wood/coal stove installed into the cellar. It was setup for wood at first, and it cut down on our energy bills quite a bit. Years later we switched to coal because it was easier to acquire and store. I’m not sure if it made any difference to the budget or not. They stopped using it completely many years ago so it’s just sitting there. Once we opened it up in the late fall to clean it before using it for the cold months and found a dead squirrel inside. It had fallen down the chimney, wiggled its way through the pipes and into the stove and died. It was gross. At the time it was sad, but now that I’ve come to hate squirrels (they steal bird seed from my feeders) I’m kinda happy about it. Suck it, squirrels.

As part of the initial installation of the stove we had a vent put into the basement ceiling/living room floor with a fan that would help blow the warm air from the stove up to the living room. It worked great, and to a kid it gave me a cool new thing to use while playing with Star Wars toys. I basically had a real world Sarlacc pit in my living room floor.

Fast forward to 2020, the vent is still in the floor. The fan hasn’t been turned on in decades, and the actual metal vent that covers the fan is pretty much bashed to hell. It’s got to go.

Back story #2 – The bulkhead.

This one will be much, much shorter. We have a bulkhead door in the cellar. It leads to the back yard. There’s an inside door, then a bunch of concrete steps that lead up to an outside door. Simple, right?

The actual story – That wascally wabbit.

My brother in law, Ken has decided that today is the day that the hole in the living room floor gets covered. He brought a bunch of tools into the house through the bulkhead. He opened both doors, took a load of stuff in from his car, went back outside to get another load and…

A rabbit ran into the house.

No, really. A friggin brown little rodent bunny rabbit hopped on down the bulkhead stairs into the cellar. Once there it likely got really confused and found itself a really good hiding place and hunkered down, apparently waiting for more bunnies to come and rescue it, because that’s probably how it would work in a Disney cartoon, right?

That was about 9:00am. It’s now coming up on 2:00pm and that little shit is still there. How the hell are we going to get it out? One of those box leaning on a stick with a carrot underneath rabbit traps that they use in cartoons? Does those even work? Do we leave a trail of carrot chunks leading from the cellar up the bulkhead stairs and out the door in the hopes of enticing him to follow the path? It’s a little bunny, what if the stairs are too steep?

What the ever loving fuck? Isn’t there enough shit going on in my parents’ lives right now?

A bunny rabbit.

I shit you not.

A bunny friggin’ rabbit.