My Week 253: Squirrelling Around And Other Tales

I’m very tired right now. I know I’m very tired, because when I get very tired, I also get very swear-y, mostly at inanimate objects. To whit:

At the computer: “Why are you so f*cking SLOW?! Come on!!”

At the raspberry bushes in the garden: “Do you think I don’t see what you’re trying to do? Touch me again and I will DIG YOU OUT, you nasty piece of sh*t!”

At the driver ahead of me: “It’s a f*cking CORNER! Get around it—are you trying to make a goddamned meal of it?!”

At the movie last night: “Are you seriously trying to tell me that Dumbledore’s mom was some random lady who was LOST AT SEA?! That makes no f*cking sense, J.K. Rowling!”

At my car’s Bluetooth lady: “It’s KEN!! It’s always KEN! When will you f*cking LEARN??!!”

Yet despite my absolute fury at things that can’t talk back, I keep it all to myself when it comes to people. For example, yesterday I passed our dining room and noticed that Ken had draped all the cloth napkins that he had washed over the back of a dining chair literally 6 inches from the drawer WHERE THEY ARE KEPT. Did I yell and swear at him? No. I quietly put them away myself, because it was his birthday. But there is a middle ground, a “no man’s land” if you will, between inanimate objects and actual human people. This territory is known as The Squirrel.

I’ll be honest with you right up front. I don’t like squirrels. And I can already hear you protesting, “Aw, but they’re so cute!” and let me stop you right there. No. They are not “cute”. I have had many encounters with squirrels in my lifetime, and at no point was I distracted from their destructive behaviour, obnoxious attitudes, bizarre habits, or sarcastic temperaments by the thought, “Well, at least they’re cute”. Squirrels are the serial killers of the rodent world, the stuff that nightmares are made of. This actually happened to me when we had a cottage. A squirrel with an incredible sense of entitlement decided that she owned the place and she was super-intimidating. I started calling her “Charles Manson” until Ken pointed out that she had two rows of squirrel boobs, so I changed her name to “Squeaky Fromme”. One day I looked up at the roof, and saw her halfway in and halfway out of a little hole under the eaves, just hanging there staring at me like a furry gargoyle. I started screaming, and she took off. Later, Ken and I were sitting on the porch—I had my back to the driveway. Suddenly, I heard a noise, like a demon muttering, and I turned around—Squeaky was actually sneaking up on me. It turns out that she had taken up residence in our attic, where she had some babies who were also little dicks, running around and chewing on things at all hours of the day and night. We finally live-trapped them all and drove them out to the country. This is not a euphemism—even if I don’t like them, I would never deliberately hurt one.

But now, I’m experiencing déja vu, because the other day Ken called me to the window and said, “Look at that squirrel with a huge chunk of grass in its mouth. It’s climbing up the downspout—what do you think it’s doing?” and my response was “That little m*therf*cker!” because it was BUILDING A NEST under the decking of my balcony. So I went out and yelled “Hey!” and its head popped out, startled.

We stared at each other, and in that moment, we both knew the game was on. I ran upstairs and out onto the balcony, which caused Squirrel-y Dahmer to scramble out and run to the corner of the roofline where he sat, staring at me like I was some bee that he was worried about, which then prompted me to point at him and yell, “I SEE YOU! Don’t think for a minute that I don’t know what the f*ck you’re up to!!” because all I could keep thinking about was him popping up between the decking and biting my toes. After a few days of me randomly going out onto the balcony and stomping around, sending Titus out to intimidate him, and blasting heavy metal music at him, he seems to have run away, never to be seen again.

So, tired, yeah.

Here are some random notes from my phone.

1) Porta-potty relief

No, this is not the happy ending to a constipation story. What happened is this: When we work off-site, we have to have an extra outdoor bathroom trailer because many of our temporary staff are women and as we all know, women go to the bathroom constantly, especially if they don’t think they’ll be able to go to the bathroom for a while, even if they don’t really need to. So the line-up to the women’s bathroom is always extremely long. The problem is that the trailer is never level, but on an angle severe enough that I’m afraid to use it for fear of it toppling over. This wouldn’t pose a problem except that the windows and doors are always on the side that would hit the ground, thereby trapping me inside and causing me to drown in sewage. This is weird, yes? But not so weird that I don’t have a pact with a colleague who feels exactly the same way in which we notify each other when we’re going out there with the promise: “If I’m not back in 5 minutes, check that the porta-potty hasn’t fallen over.” But when we arrived at the site this time, she came to me very excited:

Colleague: The portable toilet trailer is here!
Me: Ergh. How bad is the angle?
Colleague: Pretty bad, but it’s set up perpendicular to the building this time so instead of toppling over, it would just roll down into the parking lot, hitting a bunch of cars!
Me: THAT is excellent news.
Colleague: I KNOW!!

2) I was thinking about the size of Siberia and I got scared.

Personally, I had never even considered the size of Siberia or why that should be frightening but I overheard a guy on the train say this to someone he was talking to on the phone, and it sounded very intriguing. Then later, I heard him say “It’s a monster but it’s in the form of a deer standing perfectly erect” and I didn’t know if he was still talking about Siberia or something else, but the whole conversation made me realize that my porta-potty story was pretty normal.

It’s actually terrifyingly large. Who knew?

3) Meeting Cindy Bankstock

A few weeks ago, some of us from work went to a presentation. We walked in and were met by a woman who introduced herself as Cindy Bankstock (not her real name). I was immediately incensed. Not because of her name, silly—I’m not THAT tired. No, last year, I had applied for a position with another unit, the manager of which was Cindy. I love my job, but this was exactly the same kind of job AND only a 40 minute drive from my house, so it would have been perfect. I had all the qualifications, including having done the same work before, but surprisingly, I didn’t even get an interview. So I emailed Cindy, expressing my thanks for her consideration of my application and my regret at not being interviewed. I wasn’t expecting anything, but she wrote back and offered to give me feedback on my application. I thought it wouldn’t hurt, so I agreed. She sent me an official telephone meeting invite for the next week, but it was on Easter Monday. Still, she had sent the invite so I figured she was happy to do it on our day off. I had family over, but I disappeared upstairs at the designated time and waited for the phone to ring. And waited. And waited, until it was obvious that she wasn’t calling. So I emailed her and said I was sorry we hadn’t been able to speak—perhaps we could reschedule? And I never heard from her again, until I came face to face with her at this presentation. She introduced herself, as I said, and then I introduced MYSELF. I enunciated my name very slowly and clearly, then I stared at her. And like a squirrel, she stared back. Then she ran away, never to be seen again, leaving the rest of her team to do the presentation. And I didn’t even have to stomp around.

53 thoughts on “My Week 253: Squirrelling Around And Other Tales”

  1. Oh wow, you weren’t kidding, squirreling around was definitely the them of your entire week. No wonder your so tired, ugh. Sorry that you are feeling a bit miffed but I hope you get some rest to help with the squirrel emotion overload. I too have arguments with inanimate objects, yelling at their sheer stupidity and unwillingness to cooperate! Like the my cars sunshades from hell, the office copier/printer who almost always never takes my user code or the wireless keyboard i killed because it would randomly type “i’s” and “o’s” while typing emails or reports. I got tired one day and chucked it into the trash, went up to the IT guy and demanded a wired keyboard that wouldn’t type shit it wanted instead of what I was writing. Haven’t had any issue since 😎😉

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  4. Squirrels are a problem in country houses, modtpeole don’t care for them at all. Chipmunks are cuter😉. Good for you on the Cindy thing, too bad she ran away, can’t be much in a leader position.☺️

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  7. Squirrels are evil – it’s one of those things people never tell you. Once, a squirrel got itself trapped inside our storage room. When my husband opened the door to investigate the ruckus, the squirrel jumped off a box and flew – yes, flew – into my husband’s face. I’ve never trusted them since.

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  8. About 17 years ago I just about got into a fist fight with a squirrel over a stolen tomato. To be clear, the squirrel stole the tomato…one that I watched grow over the course of a summer, it was perfection until that shrunken fur monster stuck his fangs in it. He dropped the tomato and ran up a utility pole. I was the crazy lady yelling at a squirrel shaking my fist toward the sky….so yes, totally normal. Also, I would definitely make a porta-potty pact with a colleague. You’d be nuts not to – drowning by sewage is a terrible way to die. I hope Cindy gets attacked by squirrels. Happy Birthday Ken!

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  9. I don’t think anyone thinks squirrels are cute. People who say squirrels are cute just don’t want to admit that they want to murder squirrels just as much as the rest of us. Not that I really want to murder squirrels. I just want them to go away. Or at least not be such destructive little monsters. Although we did reward one of our dogs when he caught a squirrel. And he didn’t just catch it. It was like he was Sirius Black and the squirrel was Peter Pettigrew.
    Still I don’t think killing squirrels is a good idea because, from your description, it sounds like they get reincarnated as Cindy Bankstock.

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  11. It doesn’t matter how cute they are – all wild animals have their place and it is not nesting in our homes, attics, under decks etc.. In my opinion yelling at them, swearing, stomping feet, sending the dogs after them and any other way to make them uncomfortable in better than killing them. We have had an unwelcome duck in our pond this week and are using many of these techniques,

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  12. I feel the same about birds as you do about squirrels. I was walking down the street with Snuff at 6 am one morning when something hard hit me in my lower back causing me to jump and cuss in turn dropping snuff’s leash. When I went to pick up the leash, she had the culprit in her mouth…damn bird, good dog!…… and Cindy….still lol….

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  13. I thought I was the only f*cking one who swears when tired. 😂🙄 so we had squirrels in the eve of our house! The damn hole keeps getting bigger. I mean first it was one adult and two juveniles. Then the cousins came to visit and friends of friends… there were again some juvenile squirrels. Then… Dezzie came to live with us. (A 3 year old golden doodle with an attention deficit disorder.) 9 squirrels were dropped at my feet, praise the dog. I explained to the deceased squirrel if they had not taken up residency in my people home. I hope the squirrel lady uses the ports potty and it tips! Naw, I’m tired. Kinda funny to visualize. 😊💜

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  14. That’s funny, cuz about a month ago I went out back to see Ludo yelling at the top of his golden lungs at a pair of squirrels on the edge of the fence. They were just sitting there, taunting him, and then they proceeded to run back and forth across the back fence (about 150 feet long), stopping to chatter at him here and there along the way. I was like, wth are these guys thinking … aren’t they supposed to be AFRAID of big dogs?! They played this game for a while when I finally made Ludo go in. For a good half hour afterward they would show up, try to get our attention, run up and down the fence-line and then, ultimately, gave up and went to harass someone else (probably you).

    I kept thinking this is the kind of thing that I thought only happened to Suzanne.

    Maybe they found me in the comment section of your blog.

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  15. I actually like squirrels, but they are really menacing sometimes! I had a pair that used to taunt my dogs relentlessly on top of the fence, and I swear they really enjoyed doing it! They seemed to take particular delight in hanging juuuust out of dogs’ reach and flicking their tails back and forth. I think they’re a lot more clever than they let on!

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  17. Sometimes squirrels–both the real and metaphorical type–climb electrical poles and short out all of the electricity. Of course, that’s an inconvenience for a while, but that particular squirrel is gone–out of the picture:)

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  20. Ugh..squirrels. A few years ago our old bbq grill cover went missing, I looked everywhere for it, thinking the wind had caught it and blown it into the neighbors yard or down the street. A few months later we had someone come and do work in our attic and guess what…the stupid squirrels had stolen the grill cover to shred and turn into a nest.

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