Peanut

I've been waging a war against the squirrels.

A few months ago, my dad brought me a large bag of bird seed. I've been slowly using it to fill the bird feeder that hangs close to a railing outside my house. The distance from the bird feeder to the railing is the precise length of a squirrel from hind to fore paws, which means I've witnessed many awkward squirrels scrambling desperately to snatch sunflower seeds with their grubby little paws as the feeder swings to and fro. When I see this, I yell at the squirrels. Greedy little jerks.

Several weeks ago, as I approached my front door after work, I heard a mad scrabbling noise. When I was feet away from my apartment, a squirrel came shooting out of the bird seed bag, seeds flying from its fur as it sprang away. I rolled the bag closed tightly.

For weeks, nothing else happened.

Then I went out of town, and there was an attack. I arrived home to find the bag of bird seed savaged. A corner had been ripped off and seeds were everywhere. There was distinct evidence of squirrels having rolled in the spilled seed. I wasn't sure quite how to remedy the situation. Leave the seed until it had been completely consumed by creatures? Try to gather it and throw it into the woods? Pull out the bb gun under my bed, use the seed as a lure, and wait for the culprit to return to the scene of his crime?

That week I was either lazy or busy, so I did nothing. Well, not nothing. I yelled from my living room like a lunatic when the squirrels would show up to gather seeds; they always came in quads, like little Terry Goodkind thugs. And I cursed the sky when I would walk out in the mornings to find that birds had processed and voided the seeds right there on my doorstep.

All of this behavior culminated a week later when my sister was over. I peered out the front door and called "Hello, Peanut!"
"Is that one in particular or just all of them?" Kitten inquired.
I stared at her blankly.
"I mean, are all the squirrels called peanut now, or have you singled one out?"
"Ah. I was just greeting my neighbor's cat. Named Peanut."
She laughed and laughed. I realized I'd been acting totally bonkers.

My dad visited a couple days later and dumped the seeds in a gravelly area a few feet from my door. Those lazy squirrels never bothered to finish them. The seeds turned into a strange little patch of grass, an unpleasant reminder of my insanity.