This one is like a real blog entry--not edited for content or grammar. I may do editing and rewriting on these letters in the future, but not for now. (This has been edited for names.)

April 13, 2008

Dear Grandma Croft,

We’ve had an exciting week here. It must be spring because the squirrels have been trying to take over.

This isn’t unusual, per se. I mean, the squirrels often try to take over this time of year in other parts of the state, but it is a bit unusual for Idaho City. You see, Idaho City used to be primarily fields and so all the housing is quite new and any trees that we do have are also quite new and not quite ready for things that tend to live in them, like squirrels. And yet, here they’ve come with full-on attacks.

It started last Thursday afternoon. I pick Avadore up from school at 3:15 and he, and LD, and I pulled into our driveway at 3:37. I gathered my bag and the papers from Avadores’s school, Avadore gathered his book he has to read for homework, and LD gathered his little red car. I opened my door and suddenly, out of nowhere, they were upon us! There were gray ones, and albino ones, and black ones, and brown ones. Now, let me tell you—I was absolutely surprised; I’ve only ever seen brown squirrels before.

But anyway, they were upon us! They were on top of the hood of the car, and on the windshield, and scurrying up the side of the car and the doors, and were flowing over into my car like a wave of sharp, brown fur. They were biting at us, and scratching us, and chittering away, most likely saying really offensive things one could understand if one only spoke squirrel.

Well, let me tell you, I scream. I scream so loud that Avadore scream and LD scream and the squirrels screeched and then only chittered louder and louder. I tried to push them off of me, but they have pretty sharp claws, and they hung onto my jeans and my denim jacket. I danced around in my driveway, flailing my arms about, shaking my head, shrieking all the while. Avadore jumped out of the car and ran at me, beating at the squirrels with his book bag, yelling, “Hey you walnut belching scum squirrels! Get off my mom!” (He’s such a good boy.) LD unbuckled his car seat and got out of the car, too. He growled at the squirrels and kicked at them with his big old blue snow boots.

But try as we might, nothing could stop the squirrels. They continued to swarm onto me and onto the car. “Run for the house, boys!” I yelled. But they wouldn’t leave me.

“No man’s left behind!” Avadore cried.

LD growled at the squirrels some more, who continued to chitter some more.

“I’ll be right behind you boys!” I yelled. “Just get into the house and prepare for battle!”

So Avadore grabbed the keys from me and he and LD ran into the house as I distracted the squirrels from my kids.
Finally, after a lot of dancing and squishing squirrels, I got them off of me and could make a run for the house without bringing any squirrels with me.

We hunkered down in the house until Rice got home. Avadore was a little disappointed that he didn’t get to go out and play with his friends, but he was more worried about the squirrels. After getting inside the house, we found that I had little welts all over where the squirrels had nipped and scratched me; Avadore didn’t want anything like that to happen to him. Besides, he’s smaller than I am and he was worried that they might eat him.

The squirrels were covering the driveway and were hanging
from the roof when Rice got home. The kids and I had hidden in the basement so we didn’t have to hear them scurrying all over the roof. We knew he was home because we heard the garage door open, but then we heard his engine rev and the loud thump and clattering as he drove over the squirrels in the driveway. Miraculously, he got the car in the garage before any squirrels hitched a ride on his car.
He ran in the house and found us downstairs. His face was pasty white, and ours must have been, too; he asked if we’d been with the ghosts of squirrels past. I said no, they were most definitely the ghosts of squirrels past and present. We stayed down in the basement trying to figure out what to do.

Rice finally remembered he had a friend who worked at a zoo, so he called him and asked what we should do about all the squirrels. His friend said we should make the squirrels dinner—they sounded like they were carnivorous squirrels, so a dinner of canned chili with cheese, onions, and tortilla chips would probably make them happy and they’d go back to the trees from whence they came. So I dug through our food storage looking for canned chili. The problem is that Rice likes the canned chili and it will be good for our food storage, so instead I figured that I’d cook up a chicken in a can into some stew and give that to the squirrels.

Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a chicken in a can, but they’re sure not anything to write home about. They’re ugly, and nasty, and the only reason anyone would ever want to eat them was because Armageddon has hit. Well, this seemed sorta like Armageddon to me, so I grabbed that nasty pasty-looking chicken and threw it in a pot and let it cook. I added some cheese, onions, and tortilla chips, just to be sure. I also added some chocolate sauce because I like chocolate and figured the squirrels would like chocolate, too, and could see no reason why I shouldn’t butter the little buggers up a bit.

So we put the chicken stew out for the squirrels and waited for the next day.

We got the kids up and ready for school and Rice got ready for work. When we opened the front door we saw the squirrels outside—they were still alive, but barely, it seemed. They were all shuffling around with a glazed look in their eyes and their little paws stretched out ahead of them. They were also no longer chittering but were making more of a moaning sound. Squirrels moaning en masse is sort of like the sound a really big garbage truck makes when it’s backing up.

Well, we slammed the door. We didn’t want to take any chances. The squirrels didn’t look like they were feeling very well, but one never knows with squirrels.

So we sent Avadore and LD downstairs to play, and called Avadore’s school saying he wouldn’t be coming in on account of squirrels, and Rice called his work and told them he couldn’t see his way beyond his driveway and so he’d come to work another day. I made breakfast.

About noon we looked out of the house again. The squirrels were still there, but now they were even more pale, and their fur seemed to be peeling off. They were still moaning like a giant garbage truck backing up, still glassy-eyed, and still shuffling around with their no longer cute little paws out in front of them. Rice took a picture of the squirrels with his digital camera and sent the image via e-mail to his friend at the zoo.

The friend e-mailed us immediately back. “These are zombie squirrels on your hands. Why didn’t you tell me you had zombie squirrels! Wait… you didn’t feed them chicken in a can, did you?”

Well, wasn’t I embarrassed…

Anyway, Rice’s friend told us that the best way to get rid of zombies, squirrels or otherwise, is to use Nerf dart guns. Thankfully, Rice’s mom never threw any of his childhood toys away and gave them to us when we got a house. And thankfully, as a child, Rice loved Nerf guns. Now, the only problem was that we didn’t have room in our house for Rice’s artillery of Nerf guns and so we’d put them into storage.

We were going to have to go out.

We bundled up in our most padded clothing, jumped into Rice’s car, and made a run for it.

The good thing about zombie squirrels is that they don’t move as fast as regular live squirrels.

So the car peeled out of the garage at top speed, and we closed the garage door as fast as possible. We had zombie squirrels flying everywhere, and LD hid his eyes because he is the sensitive sort. We got out of the house without any squirrels hopping on the car or getting into the house. So far our mission was a success!

We hit the storage unit in record time, and luckily we also didn’t pass any policemen to pull us over. We didn’t know how many Nerf guns we’d need, so we rented a small trailer to pile them into. We also piled a bunch of Nerf guns into the car. Now, we had a lot of guns and there wasn’t exactly room for four of us to fit in the car; however, Avadore being the brave soul that he is volunteered to ride atop the trailer, Nerf gun cocked, ready to wipe out the first squirrels.

Sadly, this time we did run into a police officer. We were driving pretty fast, but he was mostly worried about why we were letting our six-year-old son ride on top of the U-Haul trailer and not inside the car in his booster seat where he was supposed to be. Thankfully, he was a pretty understanding guy who recently had problems with some mole people at his house and, instead of arresting us or even giving us a ticket, he gave us an escort back to our house. He totally had the lights on his police cruiser going and everything.

LD cheered; Avadore maintained his stance. He’s such a fine little soldier. Still, the grin on his face was broad and I could tell he wished his classmates were there to see him that day.

We pulled up in front of our house, and Avadore took the first shots at the zombie squirrels. Bam! Bam! Bam! He shot several, and we watched them all fall and smoke as they lay on the fresh spring grass. LD, Rice, the police office and I all jumped out of with our own guns and proceeded to take down our own squirrels. Bam! Bam! Bam! The squirrels fell, moaning, and probably cursing at us.

After about an hour we thought we had them all, but then we saw several regrouping on our roof. Avadore, that brave little soldier, ran and vaulted himself up to the roof where he continued to shoot down several zombified squirrels. He was like a mini-Rambo up there with all those hungry squirrels. They clawed at him, trying to eat his snow pants and parka and snow boots, but he took them down.

And as he took down the last squirrel we saw one last one rise above the vault of the roof. And oh, it was a mighty beast! It was as big as a Doberman Pincher, and was frothing at the mouth. It went right for Avadore and I knew it was intent on eating him. So I did the only thing I could do. I pulled out my own Nerf gun and shot it, yelling, “You vile stinkin’ nut eater! Take that!” And the squirrel fell. Be see, the roof slopes, and as gravity pulled him down he slid into Avadore and took Avadore with him.

Avadore and the giant squirrel landed on top of the earth with a thud. We all ran over. The squirrel was dead, but Avadore? Was Avadore okay?

Of course he was; no one can keep Avadore down. The left side of his face is scratched up, but he survived the attack.

And so did we. We did send the nice police officer home with lots of squirrel, despite his polite declines, but we still had a lot left over and none of our neighbors want any. So we’ve been feasting on squirrel. We had squirreloni and cheese Friday night, squirrel and black bean soup last night, and tonight we had a squirrel casserole, and tomorrow we’ll have macaroni, squirrel, and tomatoes. This week I get to make squirrel jerky, and freeze some for the winter, and make some squirrel lasagna.

So all this is to say that if you’d all like any zombie squirrel down there, please let me know and I’ll ship some in.
Hope you are all well.
Love,

Maggie