Deez Nuts

I am not one for decorating the outside of my home for the holidays, let alone rake my leaves or water flowers. I grew up in the country, which meant that very rarely would a person even see my home. The coyotes and cows don’t really care about twinkling lights. Children would not venture the five miles of unlit dirt road to our house; otherwise, my parents might mistake them for furry predators and accidentally shoot them. We didn’t even have a neighbor to marvel or envy any celebratory acts of the holidays. The closest neighbor was two miles away which, according to my brother, is great for peeing off the side of the deck.

I have taken on the family tradition of not participating in holiday decorations. My roommates would often complain that I was just plain evil in this respect. Somehow I just don’t enjoy straddling rooftops in twenty degree weather, let alone singing carols with frostbitten fingers. That’s just not for me…bah humbug. Maybe one day, a starving child filled with hope and optimism may change my mind. But I work in philanthropy, so maybe feeding a third-world family for a year makes me feel better than twinkling lights and carols. (Although I enjoy the spiked cider during any occasion.)

The one decoration that I use every year is the pumpkin. It’s easy. It costs under three bucks. It requires no strategic placement. It works from Halloween to Thanksgiving. It’s orange. But every year since I’ve lived in Indiana, my pumpkin does not make it to Thanksgiving due to its ultimate defacement. At first, I thought that my scarred pumpkins were the result of some strange prankster who chose to slowly carve out its innards as opposed to smashing them on the front lawn. But last year, I caught the bastard. Damned squirrels. I would take pictures but you wouldn’t believe me…these rotund little balls of menace curled up inside my now-hollowed out pumpkins.

This perhaps is a nice little segue into squirrels and Indianapolis. How, do you ask, can I find a reason to make Indiana a target of every complaint? According to Toombsday, I’m a hater, by nature. I swear there is an ounce of love and hope in every message. But perhaps I will get to that later. I just explained that I moved here from the backwoods of Oklahoma, didn’t I? That I have consumed moonshine, can race barefoot on gravel, and showered in thunderstorms. (This, by the way, makes Herbal Essence’s orgasmic level look like a wet firecracker.) Or in the words of Unfrozen Caveman, “Your world frightens and confuses me! Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out of my BMW and run off into the hills.”

So this was a tangent, no? Back to the subject at hand…Squirrels! Toombsday’s mother visited Indy for a football game when she noticed the squirrels, “They’re just so…fat.” Yes, they are a bit round. Their sqabowolly legs slow them down a bit. They are fair game for cats and cars. If they were in Oklahoma, we would stop hunting deer and opossum for dinner. But I decided to investigate. And I learned there is a direct correlation between disappearing trees and fat squirrels.

Abstract:
There are two types of squirrels: gray and red squirrels. Or skinny and fat ones respectively. The gray squirrels are spry, but they are absentminded. They bury their acorns and forget where they hid them…kind of like a pothead and his weed. Eventually, these will sprout into trees, then forests…get the picture? But the red ones, oh these little bitches who destroy my pumpkins, will take them to one place where the seeds “suffocate,” are rendered infertile, and die (sort of like a workaholic woman, no?). But instead of adopting cute little Chinese babies, their habits are counteractive to forests. And they’re too damned lazy to bury the important seeds deep enough to propagate trees. Hence, they become the freeloaders of the rodent world, chitter chattering about the weather and staring at me like they expect some sunflower seeds. This system has blossomed in Indiana to the point that gray squirrels are practically nonexistent and red squirrels dominate. Some forest rangers claim that we still have gray squirrels, but I have not seen one to reinforce their claims.