Upon moving into my new ground level apartment, I was excited I could finally own outside plants. They would be mine; they would produce fruits of my labour. This was sparkly, new and exciting, I could produce my own food, off the grid.
I went and bought plants. I purchased the necessary plant-growing things: dirt, pots, soil plants, tools. I set up my little garden on my ground-level patio, my very own garden patio. I had very high hopes for my garden to be fruitful. I bought plants: tomatoes, chives, rosemary, parsley. I planted radishes and arugula (only 30 days gestation, whatever that means). My eyes and stomach were wet with anticipation.

You can imagine my disappointment when I woke the next morning to find the pots tipped over, the plants all pulled out, dehydrated little plant corpses strewn about my patio. A crime scene investigation report revealed evidence foul play, but not by birds.

Peanuts. Someone had tucked peanuts into my soil, and I had a sneaking suspicion I knew who.

Vermin. It was the neighborhood squirrels.

I cleaned up the mess as best I could and strung a wire along the railing to discourage rodents. I’m quite sure they were watching me.

The following morning, there was another patio crime scene. I was furious. I knew I had to address the problem at the root–the man next door feeds the squirrels.

The old man next door is crazy; he wears broken earphones and talks squirrel.  To be frank, I suspect the earphones aren’t plugged into anything (literally or figuratively). I was far past reason, reason was out the window. This was war. I had to fight terror with terror. And terror works like this: A note to the man nailed through a (dead) squirrel to  a tree: “If you feed the squirrels, I’ll kill the squirrels. If you love the squirrels, don’t feed them”. The medium is the message. And it seemed reasonable, passing squirrel-death responsibility onto the feeder of the squirrels, and not their killer.

The City, in its wisdom, deems squirrels as ‘vermin’ and therefore open season. Euthanizing squirrels may be immoral to some, but is legal for all. Poisoning seemed easiest. In an ‘aha!’ moment, I went to the medicine cabinet, selecting a 30 mg tablet of Oxycontin. One of these really messes me up, it should kill a squirrel the size of a juice box.

I crushed the tablet, mixed it with peanut butter, rolled it into a little ball, and put it on the balcony railing. I waited. The squirrel came, picked it up, looked at me, ate it and bounced away. I hadn’t thought this part through.

The squirrel was gone. I didn’t see it for days. The afternoon of the third day, I went out onto my balcony to tend to what few plants survived, and there it was, staring at me, alive, the same mangy grey squirrel twitching its little squirrel tail, and I swear to you that little fucker winked at me.

I marched back to the medicine cabinet, finally letting my fingers rest on Diazapam…10 milligram tablets, two of them. Mortar and pestle, peanut butter, 20 mg. Valium. Let me say that even by human standards, this is a substantial dose. It ate it, all of it, looked dizzy afterwards, and staggered off. I don’t know how a squirrel body metabolizes Diazapam, but suspected that squirrel was not long for this world.

It was back the next morning.

I needed a new strategy to clearly communicate my cause. Taking a page from one of the best terrorist organizations on this planet, the Americans, I decided to leaflet, a clear message in pictorial form and a strategy often used before bombing other countries or providing them with food aid. This seemed like a good idea.

In the end, we decided against leaflets in favor of something a little more tasteful, a clear and concise message to the squirrel feeder next door. I managed to refine my message to its essence, 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables, a haiku transcending terrorism to its purest form–art.

The squirrels kill my plants

Cheery blossoms on whiskers

Death to the vermin

-the end-