I looked out my back window this afternoon and by chance spotted a fat black squirrel running along the upper retaining wall. He headed straight for my dwarf sunflowers. He grabbed a blossom and ripped it off the plant. At this point I thought to yell but couldn’t think of the words to use so I made the noise “uh” lots before shouting “hey!”. The squirrel was totally unphased by my indignant utterances. He ran five feet back along the retaining wall clutching the blossom and then stopped to eat the seeds out of the middle right in front of me. I thought that as long as a bloody squirrel was eating my sunflower I had at least take his picture. I went to the other room to fetch my camera and by the time I returned he had dissapeared, casting aside his sunflower bloom carelessly. I guess it didn’t have as many seeds as he had anticipated.
If there were no screen on that back window I surely would have hurled objects at him. My husband asked me if I would have shot at him if I had a pellet gun handy and no window screen and I honestly think I may have. Undoubtedly I will feel bad if I actually kill a squirrel over a sunflower blossom (and 200 crocus bulbs and 50 daffodil bulbs and a few knawed zucchinis) but I wonder how long I would feel bad for and how good it would feel to plant bulbs again. My husband has promised to arm me so I had better get my moral qualms sorted before the next time I have a clear shot of a tree rat running away with a sunflower blossom.
Filed under: Gardening, Observations | Tagged: garden, moral ambiguity, pests, squirrels, sunflowers
They ate all of my potatoes! We got about 2 batches of new potatoes; new being the ones that were too small for the squirrels or gophers or whatever to eat.