My Squirrel Jihad

Squirrels empty our birdfeeder every day. And they eat every peach on every tree, every summer. They don't eat the whole peaches, they just take one bite out of each of them. They do the same thing with the tomatoes. They chew down the corn and drag the whole stalks into the woods. They even dig underground to take a bite out of every potato. They carry off every blueberry and every gooseberry. They don't stop when they have enough for the winter. They're like those magic brooms in Fantasia who won't stop carrying water.

I whack them from the kitchen window with a silenced .22.

Scores of them. It started as a jihad. But it's become more performance art. The dogs run to the window and whine to alert me of their malevolent presence. Slowly, silently, I crank the window open, freezing for long moments when necessary to avoid detection. I settle the crosshairs, take a deep breath, let it halfway out, and concentrate on sight alignment and trigger control until the shot breaks.

When I go out to retrieve my trophies, I carefully step around the overripe persimmons splattered all over our driveway. Joggers come by and see me tip-toeing in zig-zags, barefoot and in a bathrobe, carrying a silenced rifle. I go back inside and wait for the police to arrive.

My record is 24 in one day. But it's like taking buckets of water out of the lake. More just keep coming to fill the vacuum.

They shouldn't go to waste, especially since they're made of the finest black sunflower seeds and organic, tree-ripened peaches.

I'm from South Carolina, where squirrels are a natural part of the diet.

I have a recipe for squirrel sausage. I am not making this up. An empathetic friend who makes venison sausage gave me a bag of spices to use. Liz can't remember where she put it.

She doesn't seem very motivated to look. I think she's trying to sabotage my squirrel sausage project. I am passive-aggressively filling the freezer with squirrels until her memory improves.

The dogs, on the other hand, are completely with me on this, enthusiastic about both squirrels and sausage. Dogs understand me.