Member-only story
Personal Essay
The Almost Entirely True Story of My War with Squirrel
Our battle for the birdseed, and its inevitable outcome
It is a sunny morning in London, and I am whistling as I put on the coffee. Birds sing in the garden. The camellias bloom. The daffodils bob their heads in a gentle breeze. And just as I pour that first cup of caffeinated happiness, I see him.
Squirrel.
Squirrel runs along the top of the fence, leaps onto a nearby tree and climbs to the lowest, narrow limb. My good mood sours. This is the limb where I hang my bird-feeder — the feeder by which I give succour to the winter-starved robins, tits and jays. And, as the theme song from Mission Impossible rises unbidden in my brain, I watch Squirrel pitch forward and hang bat-like from the branch, his body as long as the feeder itself, then proceed to claw chunks of suet from between the bars, eating them right in front of me.
I know what happens next. I know because I have done it countless times. And I know that it will be fruitless, but I watch myself perform these actions as if trapped in some shameful out-of-body experience.
I rap on the window. Squirrel does not flinch.
