Me, hate cute little squirrels? You must be nuts

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/09/2021 (1862 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I was standing in the backyard next to a very tall tree, sipping the first coffee of the day, trying to think of a topic for today’s column, when suddenly it hit me.

No, I was not struck by a sudden inspiration. I was bonked on the top of my head by a pine cone the size of a regulation volleyball.

In quick succession, several more potentially lethal pine cones plummeted from the sky and thudded into the ground near my feet.

“I can see you up there!” I shrieked, waving my fist at the sky. “You are not going to get away with this!”

Regular readers of this column will know I was shouting at a squirrel.

But not just any squirrel. No, I am certain that this squirrel — he is small, reddish-brown, with a puffy tail and cruel, beady eyes — is the same (bad word) squirrel that has been deliberately pitching pine cones at me for the last several years. Whenever I wander into our yard, he bombards me with nature’s hand grenade.

The truth is, I do not enjoy constantly writing columns wherein I make disparaging remarks about the city’s squirrel population. But I don’t have any choice, because one thing has become abundantly clear — squirrels have been out to get me ever since I started exposing the fact these reprobate rodents pose a far greater threat to our power grid than terrorists do.

Seriously, human terrorists have caused exactly zero power outages on this continent, while squirrels have been behind 1,252 blackouts, according to Cyber Squirrel 1, a scientific website that tracks this sort of thing.

It has gotten so bad that, whenever I come in contact with regular human readers when I am brave enough to leave the house, they associate me with anti-squirrel sentiments.

For example, I popped into a local coffee shop the other morning to grab a latte and the woman behind the counter squinted at my face, which was hidden by a mask, and said: “You look familiar.”

I assumed she was going to comment on the fact I have written dozens of columns wherein I sing the praises of bacon, but instead she said: “You’re that guy who writes about squirrels, aren’t you?”

Readers send me emails describing how they are also being terrorized by squirrels. One reader, after a recent column in which I described how a Toronto woman took alarming video of a squirrel clutching a knife while perched on her fence, sent me a photo of a squirrel sitting on a stump in her yard beside (brace yourselves) a very big, very scary axe.

And I am not the only one who is obsessed with the growing threat posed by the world’s squirrel population.

Consider this: Animal researchers in California made headlines last week by announcing that squirrels have personality traits that are virtually identical to humans.

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, the first to document personality in golden-mantled ground squirrels commonly found in the western U.S. and Canada, found the furry rodents had four human-like traits: they are bold, aggressive, athletic and sociable.

The data led the analysts to conclude that bolder and more active squirrels — “individuals that tend to be relatively more social” — covered more ground and were more successful in amassing resources such as food, than their more shy, less active counterparts.

Personally, I think these researchers are nuts. I have spent several years now studying what I believe to be the King of the Squirrels, the fuzzy and ferocious guy who hides at the top of our evergreens.

This is clearly the most antisocial squirrel in the city, and yet he rules our backyard with an iron fist. But I am prepared to make peace with this tree-climbing dictator. I do not enjoy being pelted on top of my head with pointy pine cones, but it could be far worse. Imagine if he got his little paws on an axe.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca