Last summer I had decided to not be constrained by living in an apartment and grow my own veggies and plants. How nice it would be to sit down to a salad of home grown, patio veggies. So when it finally came time to start building my garden, I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. I spent many hours preparing the pots, carefully selecting the best plants that would yield the tastiest harvest, and diligently watered and nurtured each seed/plant. Several weeks went by and I began to take a bit of joy and pride in watching my plants grow, flowers appear, and eventually little buds of baby veggies reveal themselves. I had a real garden... no better, a suburban oasis with delicious veggies and beautiful plants.
Everything seemed to be going along quite well. That is until one morning when was awakened by unfamiliar noises in what seemed to be my regular bed in what seemed to be my regular apartment... but I was wrong. My apartment had been transported back to the Jurassic era. I now appear to have a family of brontosauruses living above me. I gave little thought to these changes until a few days later I noticed my lovely garden now looked like a patch of the rain forest that had been visited by bulldozers and chainsaws. At first, I was a bit puzzled about what could have been the cause. Had the repeated hail storm mixtures of Play-Doh, Kool-Aid, and god-knows-what-else from the brontosaurus family above me finally taken its toll? Locusts? Wrath of the Meat-Industry gods retaliating against my vegan ways? As I sat down at my kitchen table to ponder the cause of this massacre over breakfast, my heart sank when I saw the creature that had caused this veggie-cide. I'm not sure why it returned to the scene of the crime... perhaps to see if there was anything it had missed... no, that was too naive of an assumption. It was to taunt me and gloat about its masterful and thorough destruction of my little sanctuary. Much to my disappointment, my patio was now the new hunting grounds of a Raptor Squirrel.
If you have never seen this rare cold blooded animal, let me describe it and the depths of its evil ways. It looks like your garden variety squirrel, but is actually a descendant of the velociraptor... only meaner. Razor sharp claws allows this creature to shred plants with an ease similar to tearing a Kleenex tissue and also apparently to have the same wall-scaling, window-walking, physics-defying powers as Spiderman. It employs gorilla warfare and ancient torture tactics like interrupting your sleep, ambushing you from hidden locations, and splashing water from your fountain all over the deck. And similar to its prehistoric ancestors, when it looks at you, you can tell it is thinking things through... sizing you up. It is thinking about how to cause the most destruction and yet cleverly leave half a plant... giving you a sliver of hope that the chili powder you dowsed your plants with had successfully deterred this heartless killing machine. Just when you get your hopes up, when you are most vulnerable, it attacks! Eating that last defenseless baby squash right in front of you. And to add insult to injury, it leaves a more "processed" version the next day on your patio furniture.
Although this beast tested my "no hurting another creature" philosophy on numerous occasions, I survived Round 1 with my beliefs uncompromised. For the beast, it ended this round with a slightly thicker layer of fat for winter. After licking my wounds, I have resolved to once again take on my elusive and cunning foe this spring for Round 2. So where does each contestant stand? Raptor Squirrel has been lazy and hibernating all winter. I have been using the inventive power of my significantly larger mammalian brain to devise a new plan of attack, a means to fortify my patio and ensure my garden will last all season... and more importantly will have a feast larger than two quarter-sized tomatoes and one leaf of spinach. Only time will tell the outcome of this next bout, but know this Raptor Squirrel... its on, so you better bring your A-game this year!
Current Score:
Raptor-Squirrel 1pt
Kate 0pt
ROUND 3
Two Words: "Cactus Garden"
Let's see if Raptor squirrel finds this as tasty as my previous gardens!
