Response To Hate Mailers

Hey, I was once like you.   The idea of killing anything was against my personal philosophy.  What's more, I felt pity for people who had so little compassion that they would kill animals for any reason other than mercy killings.  I have been a vegetarian for eighteen years.  I did not own a gun, and was moderately for gun control.  I got kicked out of the military in the sixties, marched against the war in 'Nam (although I must admit I was more interested in the drugs and sex), lived in the Haight, etc.  Based on that little bit of my history, you should be able to understand what kind of person I am, how my thought processes were formed.  Sometimes, however, one discovers the error in one's thinking in unusual ways, as I did.

I have read comments by some that suggest this is a game, or that it's all in fun.  That may be true for some, but for others of us, it is a grim reality.  Squirrels have affected our lives in such a negative way we have come to hate them.  Listen to my story, which is probably similar to the others you would hear on this site, then you decide if those of us who have come to detest squirrels are cruel, sick people.

My wife and I have lived in our house for fifteen years.  When we first moved in, we loved the squirrels, enjoyed watching them play and chase each other.  We laughed when they'd steal our food if we were eating outside on our patio and went in the house for something.  We tolerated it when they ate holes in our garbage cans, accepting it as a fact of life in the city.  When they dug up my wife's flowers, we attributed it to their nature, i.e. adapting to their habitat.  Even when they destroyed our tomatoes, we accepted it as the natural order of things.  Finally, something very, very sad happened that pushed us over the edge.

Our house is old, built in 1937, by the same man who built the Mother Cabrini Shrine here in Denver.  In our back yard, there is a sixty-year-old Catalpa tree, one of the largest in Denver.  We have enjoyed its shade,  and the beautiful blossoms it produces every year.  The fragrance from the blossoms is so wonderfully uplifting on a summer afternoon, sitting on the patio, day dreaming...  We loved this tree very much.  So did the squirrels; they had a den in a large hole that originally had a beehive in it.   When we had the beehive removed, the squirrels moved in.

For a couple of years, we watched them raise families, commented from time to time on the growth of the little ones, tried to guess which of the larger ones was mom, and in general, accepted them as part of our environment.  Then one day, we began to notice our tree was changing.  Dead branches began to appear; leaves would wilt and fall off for no apparent reason.  It was obvious something bad was happening to our beautiful tree.

We contacted an arborist, who came out and examined our tree.  He too, marveled at its stately beauty and size.  He also told us our tree was dying, and that the major cause of its slow demise was the squirrels living in the tree.  They eat the bark off the tree, which leaves the tree susceptible to the elements, much like not wearing a coat in winter time would be like for you and me.  They enlarge whatever holes they are living in by eating out the insides of the tree; much like a cancer would eat the inside of our human body, slowly but surely killing us.   I believe it is possible that all living things can suffer pain.  That being so, can you imagine what kind of pain our poor tree was in?

We immediately began to do everything possible to save the tree - taking off dead wood, trimming it back, deep root feeding, watering with special chemicals to try to revitalize it, trying very hard to put it on the road to recovery.  Of course, there was the matter of the squirrels.  We consulted wildlife specialists, and people who make their living removing or relocating squirrels.  We tried that for awhile, at a significant cost, but to no avail.  Move one out, two more move in.  We tried fake owls at fifteen dollars a pop.  Within a couple of days, the squirrels didn't even bother to go around them; they simply climbed over the top, as though they weren't even there.  We applied sticky stuff to our gutters and power lines adjacent to the tree.  According to the manufacturer, it was supposed to deter them from coming into the yard.  What really happened - it deterred them from stepping in the sticky stuff.

We bought three noise makers, twenty dollars apiece at Costco, that were supposed to operate at a frequency that squirrels could not tolerate, thereby driving them from within hearing distance.  Although the noise did not affect the squirrels, it did affect my wife.  Within a very short time, she became extremely irritable from the noise, she began to have headaches, and we eventually had to turn them off.

When I tell you this, you might scoff and laugh at me, but it shows you that even though we had become desperate, we still did not want to harm the little bastards.  I actually wrote letters to the squirrels, explaining I bore them no animosity, told them about the damage to the tree, asked them politely to leave, and posted them in conspicuous places in the yard and in the tree.  Yes; I honestly expected a sympathetic response, that they would understand, and move to another location.  I waited a week or so, then changed the request to a demand, and informed them that if they did not comply, I would be forced to resort to more extreme measures.  Still no response.

I began to sit outside in the mornings with the hose, spraying them until they ran into the top of the tree, and kept at it until they were driven out.  Problem is, they always came back.  When I closed up the biggest hole by covering it with a piece of sheet metal, they actually ripped the corner loose, and pulled it back far enough to get in.  They also chewed around the perimeter of the hole to make it larger. When I closed it again, they chewed out one of the smaller holes that I had filled, and began tearing out the material I had filled it with.  

Within two years time, we had to have it trimmed back again.  This time, we had all the holes filled with foam.  A couple of weeks after we had the work done, I began to notice little pieces of foam on the patio. Damned if they didn't chew out the foam!  I started back with the water again, without much success.  As you might imagine, we were at wit's end.  Then something else happened that turned this whole thing into a war.

Listen to this...

I was taking the garbage out at midnight one evening last year, and on the spur of the moment, just thought I'd spray the hole with water to make sure it was empty.  Well, it wasn't.  Out scampered a squirrel, he managed to get on the telephone wire and out of the tree.  From experience, I knew he'd be back as soon as I went into the house. I gave the matter a little thought, then decided perhaps if I were to hang a drop light over the limb in front of t he hole, it might keep the squirrel from returning, at least for that night.  I went to the garage, got the light, and swung it up toward the limb.  Unfortunately, it got hung on another limb, one which wouldn't have any effect on the hole.  So now I had to get the ladder to remove and reposition the light.  As you can see, things were beginning to get out of hand.  Even so, your most far fetched imagining cannot come close to what happened next.

I have a sleep disorder, and take a sleeping pill from time to time to help me sleep.  As it happened, I had taken one that night, before I took out the garbage.  I should have known when I had trouble negotiating the ladder around the corner of the garage that being up in a tree at midnight under the influence of drugs was probably not a good idea.  However, by this time, it had become a contest, a win or lose situation between me and that damned bushy tailed rodent.

I put the ladder against the tree, climbed up, but the cord was just out of my reach.  I climbed back down, feeling somewhat wobbly, and picked up a six foot long 1"x 4" board that was lying nearby, thinking I could push the cord back over the top of the limb with the board.  I climbed back up, could almost reach it, just a little bitty bit more... the ladder tumbles out from under me, crash and burn.

Fortunately, the ground broke my fall.  Unfortunately, the board had a three inch long bolt protruding from one end, which landed precisely in the middle of the lower part of my left leg, just above the ankle.  The ladder, of course, fell directly onto the board, driving the bolt a full two inches into my flesh.  So.  Here I am, lying on the ground, blood gushing out of my leg, seriously stoned, with a mild concussion, trying to get the ladder off me so I can get up.  Starting to get interesting, isn't it?  I haven't even started.

My wife is a beautiful and talented human being.  She loves me like no one else could ever love me.  She is the light of my life.  She is slightly flawed, however, in that when I do something incredibly stupid and injure myself (which seems to happen fairly often), she scolds me quite rudely, and continues to remind me of even the smallest of my misdeeds for several years thereafter.  I dread it so much, I have taken to not telling her when I knock myself out, and definitely avoid her altogether when I hurt myself badly enough to draw blood.  This particular incident included both conditions, so I began to thank God she was in bed asleep.  I managed to get the bolt out of my leg, get into the house, got the bleeding stopped and put some kind of medication on it that looked like it would help.  I wore long pants the next day, and worked very hard at not limping or grimacing from the pain.  As luck would have it, bad luck, that is, I wasn't out of the woods yet.

On the third day after the fall ...

My leg had swelled up to about twice it's normal size.  I knew it had become infected; now I had some serious choices to make.  Do I go to the hospital, which means I have to tell Sylvia, or wait until I lose the leg, or possibly die from the infection.  It was nip and tuck, I tell you, and I would have chosen the latter option, but I realized I had to get even with that damned squirrel.  I went to Sylvia, confessed, took my ass-chewing, and cruised on down to the hospital. You know, sometimes nurses can be real assholes.

I had to tell my story to the nurse who did the triage. I could see her smirking when I got to the part about fixing my leg up myself, and sure enough, she asked why I didn't have my wife help me.   It turns out her husband and I have similar character traits, i.e., fear of our wives, so she had no sympathy whatsoever for me.  Within minutes, the tale-of-the-dummy-in-the-tree-at-midnight-chasing-the-squirrel was all over the first floor.  I began to notice an influx of people passing the room I was in.   As they passed, they'd look in, shake their heads, and I could hear them laughing as they went down the hall.  You're probably thinking to yourself, this poor devil has suffered enough, by now the worst is over; not so. They gave me a prescription for antibiotics.

Although I am not allergic to anything, I discovered right away that certain antibiotics, e. g., the one they gave me, will have a tendency to make a person shit like there is no tomorrow, with absolutely no warning except a quick but very painful stomach cramp that sends huge volumes of fecal matter into your underwear if you are not standing in the bathroom when the cramp hits.  I wrote the run-on sentence preceding this one to demonstrate the very limited amount of time it took to vacate my bowels.  I called the hospital, got the same nurse, who told me to eat cultured yogurt, and it would take care of it.  I could hear her telling her little nursey friends about me as she was hanging up the phone.  What's else could be worse, you say?  Well, check this out.

The caca didn't go away completely, so they put me on another antibiotic, same effect.  At the same time, the infection continues to move up my leg.  I get to the point where I can't walk, so I have to use crutches.  I'm going in every day to take antibiotics intravenously, and still taking pills, but the leg continues to get worse.  Nobody can figure out what the problem is.  The wound does not appear to be that serious.  I say appear, because one day as a nurse is cleaning it, she notices a hole in the middle of the wound.

The doctor looks at it, and sends me over to X-ray to see if the bolt hit the bone.  Fortunately, it didn't.  Unfortunately, a huge pocket had formed beneath the superficial wound, and was full of black, ugly, rotting, infected blood, that had to be cleaned out.  A new nurse comes in, supposedly more experienced at this sort of thing, and  begins digging around in my leg with a scalpel.  I mentioned to her that it hurt quite a bit since I didn't get any anesthetic, whereupon she informed me she'd be done in a little bit, and it shouldn't hurt "that much", anyway.  As the room began to fill up with people who stopped in to watch, I began to wonder if I could trust this person.  Well, "a little bit" turned out to be fifteen minutes or so, which is a lifetime when someone keeps jabbing the inside of your leg with a very sharp instrument. Every time she'd stab me and drag some more gunk out, the crowd would "ooh" and "aah" at my obvious bravery under the knife.  Truth is, she seemed to be enjoying it so much I didn't dare scream, for fear she'd prolong the process just for fun.  Eventually, "that much" made me hurl.  I felt somewhat better, since some of the contents of my stomach got on the sadistic bitch's uniform.

It was on that day, in that room, that my life became forever changed.  I began to see the furry little bastards in a different light.  I became aware of other squirrel related incidents happening around me.   Squirrels killed my neighbors peach tree; he had to cut it down.  They also got in his attic; what a bitch that was. His wife came home one day, and there was one in her kitchen.  My other neighbors have similar problems.

So there I was.  I had tried several tacks to rid us of these terribly destructive pests, spent a couple of thousand dollars, all with no visible effect.  One thing about squirrels, they are extraordinarily resilient.  No matter what I had tried thus far, they found a way to circumvent the effort.  I realized I'd been fighting a losing battle, and would continue to do so.  My disaffected hatred for these evil ruinous vandals had grown into an obsession.  I decided to let it go, and do my best to alleviate the problem by doing my small part in annihilating them in my little piece of the world.  At that point, I began looking at more aggressive alternatives.

I started by buying pellet pistols.  The first three were miserable failures.  In order to hit anything, you had to be within about ten yards of it.  That sucked majorly.  Squirrels aren't exactly geniuses, but they aren't stupid enough to let me get that close.  All three pistols had mechanical problems as well.  I didn't want a rifle, because at that time, there were only single shot pumps available.  I was about to give up, then Crosman came out with the 1077.

What a sweet rifle.  Twelve shot repeater, a magazine with a revolver type clip that slips right out without disturbing anything.  Slip another clip in, replace the magazine, and if you want to change the cylinder at
the same time, it all takes less than thirty seconds.  Sucker never jams, never skips.  Hard rear, fiber optic front.  Once that is set, if you know even half-assed how to fire a weapon, your percentages are respectably high.  I generally only miss the really easy shots because I get excited and fire too quickly, which of course, blows precision out of the water.  Usually, when I get a hit, it's either a knock out on the first shot, or the squirrel gets disoriented enough to let me get the second one in him - pretty easy, with a repeater.  I tried a raised scope for a while, but it was too cumbersome, and I quickly discovered if I needed a scope to sight, it's too far to get a decent shot.

Since I started using the 1077, I've averaged two a day on the days I go out, usually within about half an hour.  I've gotten five several times.  What's truly amazing is that I don't seem to be noticeably depleting the population.  Every time I look outside, within a minute or two, I see at least one, usually more.  However, they pretty much stay out of my tree.  It's breeding season (they breed twice a year), and I am doing my damnedest to prevent any sexual congress between these nasty little rodents, hopefully thereby affecting the head count over the next couple of years.  Unfortunately, the range in which I can be effective is severely limited.  In fact, even though my neighbors are one hundred percent behind me, I'm pretty much stuck in my back yard.  For some reason, they have a stupid law about guns in the city limits, or something like that.  Okay...

Now I've bought a pistol.  Why do I want a pistol?  I said earlier I don't like to kill animals.  What I hate even worse is to shoot them, and not kill them.  I'm not out to make them suffer.  I do all my shooting from my back yard.  I often knock one out where I can't see it to finish it off.  Consequently, I have to walk around in front, go around into whose ever back yard the squirrel is in, and kill it.  You can understand why it's not cool to walk in front with my rifle in hand, around the back of my neighbors' house, etc.  a pistol solves that problem.

I've tried crushing their heads with a hammer, carrying a bucket of water to drown them, but they are hard to kill, and it's very messy, too.  I've learned that if you put a couple more rounds into them, they die quickly, no mess, no suffering.  Much more humane.  Pick them up with channel locks, into a plastic bag, duct tape it so no other animals get into it (they carry all kinds of diseases - prairie dogs here have been found to carry plague), into the trash, it's over.

I could relate other incidents in detail, for instance, the little four-year-old girl across the street that was bitten, or the many times I've seen people brake for squirrels, almost causing accidents.  There is really no point in going any further, enough has been said, so I'll end it here.

Now that you've read the writer's tale, what do you think?  Am I a cruel, sick, sadistic person?  If you still think so, I doubt that anything other than a personal experience like mine will change your mind.  Know what?  I'd rather you would continue thinking I'm a bad person than wish what has happened to me would happen to you.  I'm not that cruel.

Live long and prosper -

writer aka Isreal