I Am Declaring War on Squirrels, Tiny Totalitarians Destroying My Garden

There is a slow bubbling rage in the background of my life at all times. A constant din never letting me forget about the depraved state of affairs. The dirty secret permeating every day life as we all go around trying to put smiles on our faces and make the best of a deteriorating situation. It’s suffocating and I need to talk about it.

I’m not talking about **gestures everywhere** and my job to cover it. Frankly, late on a Friday, I do not have any more brainspace left to cover an increasingly depressing state of affairs where Donald Trump just took the lead per VoteHub.us’s 28-day polling average, as Michigan just flipped to Trump +0.2 percent. We created the Musings section as something of a mental health cleanse for Splinter writers from covering the collapse of the climate, United States empire and the 20th century establishment, as sometimes you just have to blog about the parts of life they don’t talk about on cable news.

Which brings me to the squirrels. These stupid greedy motherfuckers who just take more and more for themselves with no care for the consequences of their actions. I’m gonna kill them. I swear. I am at my limit with this shit.

My big summer project was digging up neglected parts of my backyard and putting a couple of vegetable gardens in. This was my first venture into gardening and I was excited. For the most part, it worked out like a dream. I grew some of the best tomatoes, peppers and carrots I’ve ever tasted, assembled a litany of fresh herbs and spices that have made my cooking a hundred percent better and developed a beginner’s green thumb. I’m very proud of myself.

The squirrels couldn’t care less. All they see is dirt to bury their food in for the winter, and now they’re digging up all of my food to create space for their food and I am going to make them food for my dogs if I ever catch these tree rats in the act. I cannot live like this anymore.

And I hate hating them! They’re so cute! I’m an animal lover. My two dogs, bless their hearts, are perfect baby angels, but useless defenders of our precious vegetables. They just sit there and smile while these adorable tiny monsters uproot my beautiful lemon basil plant so they can store a crabapple from my neighbor’s tree that’s going to rot by the winter anyway. You fools! Put your trash somewhere else!

Every day when I walk outside and discover a fresh set of holes dug in my garden by creatures who I thought I lived in peace and harmony with, I reenact the “idiots! Savages!” Dennis Reynolds spasm from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. These little shits are driving me completely insane.

I have asked friends and family for help and Googled and tried everything I could short of covering my garden which I do not want to do because it’s ugly and it feels like admitting defeat–and I will not be defeated by these tiny tyrannical monsters. I have tried trimming the trees around my garden. Sprinkling cayenne pepper on the ground. Meticulously burying sharp sticks under the soil. Nothing works. They just keep digging more holes while I lose more plants. Little idiots! Idiots!!!

In the spring, I was a hopeful new gardener filled with love for the world, excited to bring life to new corners of my backyard. Now, after seeing the plant-based horrors that squirrel totalitarianism can produce, I am cynical, battle-hardened. My once-warm heart has been covered in an icy black sludge that has accumulated from tapping into my base predator instincts to “startle and shoo them away” as Garden Design recommends. My loud noises and at my most desperate and helpless times, growling, only seems to have emboldened the squirrels and made them more powerful. One friend told me to grow spicy peppers in my garden, but they fucking ate the first paprika that ripened! I am clearly dealing with a different breed of squirrel here.

Next year my defenses will be more sophisticated. I am planning an expansive Wile E. Coyote-style set of traps. A squirrel tripwire connected to a plank on top of my shed with a big heavy rock on it. An elaborate suite of fireworks all carefully pointed high enough in the air so as not to harm my precious plants but still low enough to pick off the little suckers. Jet packs for the dogs to chase the squirrels into the trees and into someone else’s garden. A squirrel school to try to teach them where they are allowed to bury their food. I am willing to try just about anything in this war to save my green thumb. If this reads like madness to you, blame the squirrels. They declared war on me first.