squirrels

I know that God created all living things, and He had and has a plan for all the animals. But I think we can all agree that we just don’t like some of those animals. Like rats. Like cockroaches, especially the great big ones that can, and will, fly! Across the room. When you are having guests.

It’s hard to be angry with squirrels. They’re just so darn cute. I had a bug guy once, who was treating the house for, well, bugs. We were discussing the squirrels in the back yard (and how annoying I found them), and he said the only reason people like squirrels is because they have those darling, bushy tails that make them charming. “If they didn’t have those tails,” he said. “They’d look just another kind of rat, gnawing away at your wires, your eaves, your pecans.”

Oh, indeed. He was so right. I really do intensely dislike the squirrels, despite their adorability.

ONE–In the fall, they bury my perfectly good pecans, supposedly to have food for the long, dark, cold winter (not exactly what we have here). They bury them in the yard and in the garden. They dig up the soil in the potted plants and bury the pecans there. They damage some of the plants, as they are digging up the dirt and making the holes for the pecans. More importantly, they are raiding the pecan harvest, taking my pecans that I planned to make pies and cookies with. Truly, I actually have stood at a window, quietly watched a squirrel bury a pecan, and then gone out and gotten it back. I don’t feel at all bad about taking the stored pecan, because …

 
TWO–They do not go back and dig up the pecans. Those stored away pecans stay buried throughout the winter, and then in the spring, they sprout. We don’t think of pecans as seeds, but they are. That’s how new pecan trees get started. So, I’ve got little pecan seedlings in the yard, in the garden, in my potted plants, in the herb garden, EVERYWHERE.

If I dig them right up that first month or so, then we’re good. And it is interesting to see how the root grows down out of the pecan and the stem with leaves grows up. But one of those is all I need per spring. If I don’t get them dug up by June or July, then I’ve got a tree. After that, no matter how many times I snip them off at ground level, they keep on coming back. I have a a flower bed that I’ve been working on for years. Three or four times each spring/summer/fall, I’ve sliced down pecan trees that had grown to sapling size in the years before we moved in here. They have root systems that go impossibly deep. If I’d have let them be, we’d have bearing trees now. Don’t think that would have been a desirable situation. It might have made a nice privacy screen for our front window, but the foundation problems would have been huge.
THREE-Squirrels are not good learners. In the late summer/early fall, when the pecans have started growing nice and fat and green, the squirrels are hungry (being too absent-minded to recall where exactly their buried pecans are; and, at that point, if they did remember, it would be too late, as there would be a tree growing out of each one by then). They jump around, from tree to tree, and notice those big green, yummy-looking things, hanging right in front of them. “Yum,” they think. “I’ll try that.”

They pull an unripe pecan off the tree and gnaw a few nibbles. “Yuck,” they think. “That’s not good at all. Too bitter.” And they toss it to the ground. Then, just as they are about to leap away, they spot something interesting. “Look,” they think. “There’s some sort of large green thing hanging over there on the tree. I’m feeling peckish. I think I’ll try a bit of that.” And they reach out, grasp that big round green thing and pull it off. They take a few bites and “Oh, my goodness. That is way too bitter for me to eat.” and they toss it to the ground.

They do that over and over and over, so that dozens of my young-adult pecans never get a chance to mature.

FOUR–They are unkind. One nice day last fall, I was sitting on my garden bench, quietly reading and minding my own business. I could hear gently bitten pecans, falling to the ground, sounding like a gentle rain shower. I sighed and bit my lip. There’s really nothing to do about the squirrels nibbling on not-ripened-yet pecans. If I yell and try to scare them away, they’re not scared and stay put. Or, they leave and just come back. I’ve given up. The rodents (and yes, they are rodents) nibbled and I sat, reading.

Gnawed unripe pecan, sitting on my book, right where it landed

Then, suddenly, there was a plop on the bench beside me. Then there was a plunk of nibbled pecan right on the

Piece of gnawed pecan, covered in squirrel saliva, where it landed after it fell off my head

book I was reading. Then, bam. There was a dead-on pecan drop right on my head. Oh, yes. The squirrels were pelting me (but after first ruining an additional pecan). I had to go inside.

At some point, the green parts of the pecans still on the tree will blacken and shrivel away from the pecan seed, which contains the pecan nutmeat that we like to eat. They will eventually drop to the ground, just in time for Thanksgiving pies. Not as many pies as I’d like, due to the shortage of pecans caused by nibbling squirrels. But, some. If I get out there fast enough to collect them, before the squirrel brigade comes along to get them first and bury them.

 God also said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This food will be for you,  for all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky, and for every creature that crawls on the earth—everything having the breath of life in it. I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.
Genesis 1:29-30 (HCSB)

 The New Revised Version of the Bible and the J. B. Philips New Testament translate the word “goodness” from Galatians 5:22 as “generosity.” I’d not be telling the truth if I said I was feeling generous towards my squirrels. Perhaps I should try to develop some compassion. I read somewhere that putting up a squirrel feeder can keep them away from the pecans. I’m not sure I believe that would work. Maybe I should consider it, in a spirit of generosity.