Sarah Court

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Squirrels cause suburbanites more grief than any creatures under your sun.

Squirrels tore up my garden! Squirrels ate the seeds left out for the robins! Goddamn those marauding buggers!

I’d laugh, were I capable.

The Eastern Gray Squirrel, sciurus carolinensis, is, on average, fifteen inches from nose to tail tip. Weighs, on average, one pound. Pick up a pair of wire cutters. Snip your pinkie finger off below the nail. The size of a squirrel brain. A homo sapiens’ synaptic clusters produce enough bioelectricity to jumpstart a Chevrolet. A squirrel’s fail to produce enough to jumpstart a wristwatch.

Yet despite their many handicaps, they consistently outwit humankind. I’ve seen a grown woman crouched in her nightgown on a freezing winter morn lubing her bird feeder pole with bacon grease. Saw one man shoot a squirrel with a twelve-gauge Remington. Obliterate it. To quote an old aphorism: There’s a difference between scratching your ass and tearing big lumps out.

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