This morning, right before leaving for work, I noticed boy cat looking up at the living room ceiling with some emotion in his face. I listened carefully and heard the scritch scritch scritch of squirrel girlfriend plotting our doom.

So now, pest control dude just came over to lay the traps over the hole on the porch roof. I relay my scritch concerns as he's working, and he tells me a little story. I don't know what's going on with journalism these days, but let me tell you the paper did not do it justice.

Tabloid squirrel streaks onto the porch, takes a chunk out of the kid, and when mom goes to investigate the cries of despair squirrel took after her. As she runs like hell, he runs up her leg (christ jesus!) and bites her too.

But that's not the fucked up part. That part comes when squirrel chases the woman to her car then perches himself on her windshield, staring at her like some sort of tree-hopping Cujo.

Fire, police, and pest control dude are dispatched to what now has to be referred to as "the scene" in order to capture the squirrel for rabies analysis. Dude corners squirrel in the attic, shines his light in three different directions just like the horror movies teach us, and just as they assure, the fourth and final turn shows squirrel standing directly in the dude's face. Dude (whom I revere for this)goes for him, squirrel attacks, large cop intervenes and -- I kid you not -- pepper sprays squirrel, giving dude a snootful in the process. Squirrel just flips the bird and runs past them downstairs. Dude lies down for a while, puts on a ventilator mask, forges back in (did I mention this man is now my personal hero?) hunts and corners squirrel on the bed, where he proceeds to beat the hell out of him with a rake. Which does not kill squirrel, just makes him cranky.

They finally defeat squirrel (I wished I'd asked how; maybe they do use missle launchers), send his little body off to the CDC brain trust or whoever, and it seems squirrel has encephalitis. Now if you or I had encephalitis, we'd be at least a bit lodgy. Not squirrel. Squirrel eats encephalitis, smacks his lips, then goes after your kids and your crotch.

Then when you kill him, squirrel girlfriend plots. And waits in your walls for you to sleep, rubbing her sharp tiny hands together, over and over. Scritch scritch scritch.

Holy balls.

Squirrels carry the plague now too, you know.

Just sayin'.

Wow.

There is currently a suirrel pelt under my bedroom window where an owl flipped it at 4:30 one recent morning after emptying out the yummy meat bits. Yeah, owl!

There was a crazy squirrel in Columbus when I was in college. It attacked a postman, several residents and a police officer. I don't recall whatever happened to it.

On a tangent: LJWorld.com seems like a domain about somewhere else.

We were trying to get a squirrel out of a rental apartment, and had one window open doing the "funnel" thing, but the squirrel -- it was a bathroom -- encountered the half-wall for the bathtub and did a 180. He came barrelling back out and landed on top of my nephew's head, spun around a couple of times getting his bearings, and then went up the wall and through a transom into a room where we had no windows open.

The second time we tried we didn't close in so quickly, and he found the window.

These are awesome stories, but you guys have *got* to go to http://www.thislife.org/ and search for "First Day". It's episode #115 of This American Life, and the squirrel cop story is unbelievable.

Cop's first day on job, gets called in to catch a squirrel during a newlywed's romantic evening in their new house. Everything that goes wrong, does.

You gotta listen to it, please!

Speck, I was just hunting down the same thing!

Wow.

*puts squirrels ahead of snakes as things to be afraid of*

Squirrels on a plane.

*flexes mightily*

Squirrels on a motherfucking plane!!!

You know, this wouldn't be a problem if bbq-ed squirrel didn't taste like burning tires.

mudpuppie, that's the hardest I've laughed all day!

Speck, I was just hunting down the same thing!

That's because we're psychotically linked, baby.

great, so now i have to worry about encephalitis squirrels in the house!? here's to hoping that dude catches these evil bastards before they can do any damage to my pants. i guess i'll have this song in my head while i try to sleep for the next few weeks (months? years?).

People running around with animals attached to them is my biggest comedy trigger. If they attach themselves to someone's crotch, I've been known to pee myself.

And this is why AFV is still on the air.

Spiders and snakes and squirrels, oh my!

Squirrels are way scarier than snakes. I once got a snake out of my house. I had to use a paper towel and say homina homina homina the whole time but you know it wasn't like he put up a fight. If I tried that on squirrel, I'd be in my car right now, sobbing, with a pair of beady eyes trained on my every move.

While jrossi laughed and laughed and laughed. You are a cruel mistress, jrossi.

keee rap!

Trivia time!

'Squirrels' is the longest one syllable word!

(I can't stop shouting!)

melissa may, I think I love you.

Y'know, I'd thought we'd had trouble with the squirrels eating the birdseed from the feeder. Now I realize that we've been getting off lightly.


I'll be sleeping with the light on tonight.

I'm not sleeping at all. *nightmares*