I love comments...(Another guest post)

 I have often said that blog "comments" are often much more entertaining than the original post.

This morning, Dapper Dan from the Cumberland Post (an excellent writer, and a very funny guy) left a comment about the squirrel infestation here at Andy's Place.  I'm posting it without his permission, but ya' know...anything y'all send me is fair game.  Enjoy

Andy, I'm late to the conversation about squirrels and you've already been forced to take a certain approach. But, I will share my squirrel story with you. 

My wife and I had a run in with tree rats about eight years ago. There's a walnut tree in our backyard that attracts them and over approximately twenty years the population had grown to about the size of the Metroplex Dallas/Ft.Worth area. The dirty little tree rats were everywhere, waving their furry tails around and seeming to say "kiss this sucker." 

And as another poster noted, they are territorial. It was their place and we were the interlopers. With that large a population we observed all kinds of squirrely personalities, one particularly weird little rat, probably a "truther" like Willie, had obviously smoked too much thistle weed and seemed to have forgotten how to use his claws to climb a tree. He would back off about five or six feet from the trunk and run at the tree as fast as he could, leaping at the last minute to ram into the tree with his neck and head. Since our social life is limited as redneck Tennesseeans, we watched him do this for several weeks for entertainment. One day he was gone, probably joined Rosie O'Donnell's staff. But back to the rest of the rats. 

They were crawling all over our house now, waking us up in the morning with their scampering, scratching, gnawing, etc. We could have tolerated that, but one morning when I went outside to check and see if it was just the squirrels on the roof and not some drunken off season Santa, I noticed that the corners of the dormer were chewed off. The squirrels were eating our House. 

As in your case, the Mrs. declared war and appointed me General. We tried all the traps and other stuff you tried and then some (including large plastic owls and bags of mothballs hung around outside). As academics, we even tried forming a committee with the squirrels to talk about our issues. But they wouldn't participate in the negotiations. Nothing worked. 

Finally, we decided to use violence. Our anti-gun policy be damned. They were after all destroying our house. We went down to the Walmart and bought a New England Arms 20 guage single shot shotgun. (You could still buy guns and some Walmarts then.) My son came to visit and gave me some training, especially how to correct for the gun shooting slightly high. My neighbor who's very proficient with guns, joined the campaign. We waged total war. 

To cut this thing off so I won't write into next week, we won. We didn't completely eliminate the squirrels but the population was considerably reduced (disposal details will be supplied only to those with UASA--United Anti Squirrel Army--credentials). We repaired the dormer and got on with our lives.

There are still plenty of squirrels but they seem friendlier these days. But what's bothering me now is chipmunks. I've heard they can burrow under your foundation and weaken your whole house. I've got my eye on them with their pretty brown fur and their cute little black stripes and they're looking back at me with their big lovable Alvin eyes. But I've already got blood on my hands and one day they're gonna push me over the edge.