SQUIRRELY NEWS

Maybe he suffers from some form of jungle fever. Or perhaps it is the effect of alien gamma rays on acorns. Who knows? Whatever the cause, the old cane chair on my front stoop has become an obsession for a neighborhood squirrel who obviously suffers from some form of dementia or delusion. My suspicion is the nutso Mr. Chompers believes he is a beaver. Yesterday afternoon I caught him gnawing away at the back legs of my chair. I don’t believe it is normal for a squirrel to crave sawdust. And the beaver imperative to chaw down on anything upright cylindrical and wooden is evident in the pattern of damage he has left on my chair. So, I feel confident in asserting he thinks he is a beaver, or maybe a woodchuck.

That old chair has been sitting out there for twenty years and within the last two weeks the front legs have been reduced to toothpicks, and the heavier back legs have a sort of fuzzy quality that does not bode well for anyone interested in taking a load off their feet. I guess Mr. Chompers felt embolden to undertake his project because I have not been outside gardening quite so much over the last couple of weeks due to inclement weather. However, this isn’t the first time I have run into Mr. C.

When last we met, he was hard at work chewing through the metal drip pan on my little Weber grill out back.  I am not sure exactly how long he was at it. The windows were closed over the winter, and with the furnace running it took me quite a while to discover where the odd rattly metallic noise was coming from. But eventually I caught sight of him hard at work … stretched out tall with his front paws on the pan nibbling away at the metal. He must have been at it for some time, because he had made substantial inroads along the edge of the drip pan.

So I guess you could say this dude has nutritional issues. I only hope he gets some therapy soon. A little bit of remedial counseling would certainly not come amiss. And his cavalier disregard for the state of his teeth leads one to suppose he has much better dental insurance coverage than I do. I hope so, because he is looking at some serious reconstructive dental work as a result of his efforts if he keeps on with the beaver behavior.

Meanwhile we will see how long the chair remains upright, I have sprayed the legs with Clorox cleaner and will next try rubbing them with red pepper powder. But he seems pretty determined. I wouldn’t mind if he decided to return to his grill pan project. I don’t use it much and who am I to play dog-in-the-manger with a woodchuck/beaver wannabe. But the chair I use, so I might need to explore other options.