Daily Diatribes

Thanks Nancy S. We all need to be wary of the growing squirrel menace.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21895918/from/ET/

It’s like everybody knows now. Thanks to me and my tireless blogging about the impending takeover of the world by squirrels, people are finally sitting up and taking notice. Click on the following link and you will be horrified (thank you Gina, a tireless crusader for the Anti Squirrel League). Squirrels with the plague, squirrels taking down entire cities by frolicking in their electrical lines and finally, most horrifying of all, squirrels desecrating the American flag to shelter their heathen young. It’s just too damn much!!

The time has come people!! Rev up your SUV’s and gun them!!! It’s time to obliterate this squirrel menace once and for all!!! To hell with global warming!! It’s the squirrels that will get us first!! Act now before it’s too late!!

http://reference.aol.com/planet-earth/animals/squirrels?deeplink_level0=5&content_index=0&outlet_xmlLoc=http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlrepository/fetch.adp?id=136230%26pid=136220%26option=expand_relative_urls

Well, several of my alert readers (I only have five readers, but they are very alert!!!) sent me this piece on German squirrels gone wild. Seems that a squirrel, overcome with lust, attacked several people and was finally subdued by a gentleman wielding a crutch. Here is the text, as lifted from Yahoo, since I cannot do that hyperlink thingy:

BERLIN (Reuters) - An aggressive squirrel attacked and injured three people in a German town before a 72-year-old pensioner dispatched the rampaging animal with his crutch.

The squirrel first ran into a house in the southern town of Passau, leapt from behind on a 70-year-old woman, and sank its teeth into her hand, a local police spokesman said on Thursday.

With the squirrel still hanging from her hand, the woman ran onto the street in panic, where she managed to shake it off.

The animal then entered a building site and jumped on a construction worker, injuring him on the hand and arm, before he managed to fight it off with a measuring pole.

“After that, the squirrel went into the 72-year-old man’s garden and massively attacked him on the arms, hand and thigh,” the spokesman said. “Then he killed it with his crutch.”

The spokesman said experts thought the attack may have been linked to the mating season or because the squirrel was ill.

I believe I have made my point. Squirrels are not to be trusted. Their intent is to bring harm to mankind because they view us a threat to their acorn supply. I know you all think Squirrel Nutkin is some cute, innocent, happy little mammal, frolicking about the garden with Peter Rabbit and singing tunes, but I know the truth.

I know that Squirrel Nutkin is really a homicidal rodent programmed to destroy mankind. His beady eyes cannot conceal his rage toward humanity. His desire and intent is to bite men and women into submission with his nasty buck teeth and force them to gather acorns while he and his rodent friends lounge about.

It sickens me, it really does. I am grateful for the man in Germany who so alertly subdued Squirrel Nutkin before he could carry on with his nefarious plan. Let it serve as a reminder to us all that constant vigilance is a must. The squirrels must be controlled and every one of us is needed to fight the good fight and keep the squirrels in the trees, where they belong!!

Ok, now I have Satan logging in and commenting on my distaste for squirrels. And Dick Schickel thinks blogging is worthless and only read by family members. I bet Satan never reads Dick’s movie reviews!

I don’t know exactly why I hate squirrels. They creep me out, I guess. They have beady, little eyes and big poofy tails and those two traits don’t go together at all. Bit tails are cute; beady eyes are not. They look a bit too much like Sylvester Stallone in the 70’s. It doesn’t work for me.

Remember the Geico commercial where the little squirrel runs in front of the car and causes the driver to hit a tree and then the squirrel high fives his little squirrel buddy? I totally believe that happens all the time. Squirrels are devious that way, pretending to be all subservient when they are really plotting to overthrow mankind and take over the Planter’s nut factory. They will eliminate peanuts and turn out shelled acorns at an alarming rate. All the squirrels will get fat and the Type 2 diabetes rate will triple among squirrels, unfairly burdnening our medical system. And who will pay??

Ok, maybe Squirrel Nutkin didn’t deserve to die in such a heinous manner. Maybe I shouldn’t have Kilz’ed him, but he was in my way. I am a suburban soccer mom and all small creatures should cower in fear before me. The environment means nothing to me in my quest for supremacy over all the other soccer moms. My car is big and guzzles fossil fuels at an alarming rate. My home must be bigger and better than everyone else’s and no squirrel is gonna stop me.

I’m sorry if I have disillusioned you, my faithful readers, but this is how it must be. Squirrels are icky rodents, they possibly carry rabies, they surely dart in front of the car with no regard for my tires and they must die! And rot in Hell. Satan can deal with it! And that, my friends, is the rest of the story.

My mother in law turns 70 on Saturday, so of course there will be a big party with lots of out of town guests, some of whom will be staying with me. This necessitated me repainting the guest room upstairs. Because you should always undertake a huge project right before guests descend upon you.

I hate to paint. My fine motor skills are non existent. Lets be honest, I couldn’t construct Sponge Bob valentines and I certainly can’t color inside of the lines. But Lowe’s seduces me with its acres of colorful paint chips and its fine products that promise to make painting virtually pain free. All lies, but I threw caution to the wind and bought a Shur line edger, a Shur line corner painter and a gallon of paint.

The first order of business was to get everything out of the bedroom. I stacked it all in Josh’s room, something that has caused him great distress. Approximately 6 to 27 times an hour he moans “when are you gonna get all that crap out of my room?” Next I vacuumed and then I laid down 237 yards of plastic to protect the crappy carpet. Wouldn’t want to drip paint on top of the urine stains the dog left! Then it was time for the blue tape to protect the baseboards. Yards and yards of blue tape! Blue tape that always manages to pull away half the paint you put on the wall, no matter how careful you are to keep the tape on the baseboard and not on the wall.

Finally it was time to paint and I was already exhausted. So I trooped downstairs to have a sandwich because I had worked up quite an appetite. I ate and then piddled around, anything to delay going upstairs and painting. But the afternoon was not getting any younger, so reluctantly, I headed up the stairs to face my doom.

I opened the door and there, in the middle of the floor, sits the paint can. It mocked me with its contents, promising me riches beyond my wildest imagination, if only I could get it rolled onto the walls. I walked in and past the paint can to the primer. Because unfortunately, this room had to be primed.

Long ago, after Nancy built this house, she had a child. When Nancy received her new baby, she was overjoyed and to celebrate, she hired someone to paint fanciful scenes upon the walls of the new baby’s room. The muralist also painted the baby’s name in big letters on the wall.

Fast forward nine years later, I own the house, and the child in question no longer lives here and never even slept in the room. So I am ready to obliterate the mural once and for all, particularly the squirred in the corner of the room. I hate squirrels…freakin’ rodents!

With my sister in law by my side, we opened the primer and poured it into a pan and began joyously slathering primer over the squirrel. Unfortunately, the squirrel proved a tremendous adversary and required a second coat of primer. So we had to let the first coat dry and then we had to do a second coat.

She then left to go do something fun and exciting, leaving me to begin at the beginning. Grimly, I poured the paint into the pan, grasped the roller firmly, soaked up some paint and then I began to paint. Within the first five minutes, I managed to hit the ceiling three times. Still, I persevered and I managed to get one coat on the walls, although I did not cut in the top. I used the fancy corner painter and it was a piece of crap. I was rolling it up the wall, and I pushed too hard and the spring shot out of it and across the room and green paint dripped down my arms. What fun!

Yesterday, my wonderful sister in law came over and cut in the top and did the corners again, so today, I finished the final coat. I am in agony. Tim loaned our ladder out, so I used a swiveling bar stool to get to the high parts; climbing up and down and up and down is a hell of a workout. Any time I reached, the stool would swivel and more than once I faced my own defenestration.

But it’s done. The mural is gone, the squirrel is in rodent hell, suspended in agony over a pit of burning acorns, and I am never painting anything again! Well, at least not until we have company again!