Since reading about Marn’s squirrel adventures I’ve been thinking about the rascally rodents who live in our backyard. They won’t let me get close enough to snap mug shots so I must content myself with telephoto images taken through the patio door. For the most part the results come out fuzzy and faded, but through the magic of PhotoShop the little arboreal imps emerge with storybook charm.

Sitting here in the city I have to content myself with whatever wildlife comes along – the lizards in the driveway, the hawks who perch on the light posts and hunt in empty fields, roving gangs of raccoons, scavenging possums, and a flock of turkeys that sometimes appear in a neighborhood near both the river and a patch of undeveloped land. And of course there are the squirrels – everywhere.

I’ve long debated as to whether squirrels are homicidal or suicidal when they dart out in front of cars and scamper along power lines. The Geico squirrel commercial certainly answered that burning debate once and for all. Native Americans counted coup on their enemy and native rodents rack up their points on BMWs and Jags. The more expensive the cars careening into the bar ditch the higher the score.


These two fellows who live out back specialize in yapping dog torture. One of the neighbors on the other side of the back fence raises some sort of canine that barks pretty much 24/7. I don’t know if these folks have ten or a hundred but the slightest noise sets the dogs off. A squirrel scampering along the top of the fence throws the hounds into a frenzy. I don’t think it helps when the squirrels occasionally stop mid-scamper to flip off the pups and make funny faces.

One of these bushy-tailed bandits comes from Italian stock because he can yank up basil faster than I can plant it. I might as well just put out the garlic bread and pasta on a red-checked tablecloth for him and be done with it. This is the same rodent who walks up to the patio door and goes face to face with Dorey who almost turns himself inside out with excitement over the encounter. Not being of hunting stock, I’m relatively certain Dorey thinks that’s the funniest looking cat he’s ever seen.

R. and I have a rather interesting history with squirrels that has left us both fatalistic about the inevitability of their high jinks. Two or three years ago, when the rodents moved into the attic and installed a private bowling alley up there, R. appealed to me to do something about them. Dutifully I went to the feed store and inquired about anti-squirrel tactics.

“Red fox urine,” the guy said with a straight face.

“Excuse me?” I said, startled.

Reaching under the counter he brought up a brown bottle with a label showing a fox with its legs crossed in obvious need of the Little Fox Room. The caption read “10 oz. Pure Red Fox Pee.” The label carried no instructions nor did any manufacturer or bottler take credit for this product but the man behind the counter was kind enough to say, “Better cover your face when you open it. Smells powerful bad.”

“Um, exactly what am I supposed to do with it?” I asked.

“Just get some cotton and douse it with that pee there. Put it up in the attic. The squirrels will smell it, get scared, and run off.”

So, I paid for ten ounces of pure red fox pee that I took home and with great trepidation carried up to the attic along with a bag of cotton balls. Great Googamooga! “Smells powerful bad,” didn’t come anywhere close to describing the toxic fumes that rolled forth from that bottle. Choking back the bile, eyes streaming with tears, I doused cotton balls and tossed them around the attic.

That night it sounded like a squirrel cotillion above our heads. Not only were they not impressed with the fox urine, they carted off the cotton for their nests. Angered at having burned out my lungs for nothing, I stormed off to Home Depot and returned with a large battery, a roll of electrical wire, a wall mounted school bell, and a doorbell switch. With fascination R. watched me rig up this Rube Goldberg device and mount the switch outside the backdoor. “And how is this going to work?” she asked.

Beaming, I said, “When we hear the squirrels we press the doorbell switch which makes the school bell go off. They won’t like the sound and they’ll leave.”

“No,” she said, “they’ll just figure they’re late for class and want us to write them a tardy excuse.”

As it turned out, she wasn’t far wrong. I well remember the day I conceded defeat. I’d gone up the ladder armed with a powerful flashlight to try to determine the point of squirrel ingress. As I played the light around I gaped in astonishment at rafters swept perfectly clean by neat little paws. The invaders had tidied things up so they could run along without stepping on insulation and splinters from the re-roofing job the year before. If I’d found a tiny broom leaning in one corner they couldn’t have done a more thorough job.

Ultimately G. put us on to one of the ultrasonic squirrel repellants, which did succeed in getting the tenants to seek lodging elsewhere. Sometimes now as I watch these guys scamper about the backyard and torment the neighbor’s dogs I wonder if any of them are the same rodents with whom I dealt. If so, I don’t want to know what passes for Happy Hour chatter at their neighborhood bar.

“Hey Louie, did I ever tell you the one about the stupid humans and the fox piss?”