The Day I Declared War on a Squirrel

At 7:13 on a perfectly respectable Tuesday morning, I discovered that I had an enemy. He was a squirrel. I don’t know his real name, obviously, but I named him Gary because he looked like a Gary. He had the smug confidence of someone who had never paid a bill in his life and yet somehow owned property.

Gary was sitting on my deck railing eating a strawberry. My strawberry. I knew this because I had planted exactly six strawberry plants in a large planter beside the deck. I had nurtured them, watered them and encouraged them. I had even spoken kindly to them, which I realize makes me sound unstable, but plants enjoy positive reinforcement. Probably.

After weeks of waiting, my first beautiful red strawberry had finally appeared, and Gary was eating it. He held it between his tiny hands while staring directly through the kitchen window at me. “Excuse me,” I said. Gary continued chewing. “That’s mine. I grew that. You didn’t even contribute.” Gary dropped the remaining half of the strawberry onto the deck and left. Not ran. Not fled. Left. Casually, like he’d finished breakfast at a restaurant and was disappointed with the service.

This meant war.

I went outside and examined the crime scene. Half a strawberry lay on the deck with several tiny bite marks in it. The disrespect was staggering. I immediately Googled how to stop squirrels from eating strawberries, and the internet suggested sprinkling cayenne pepper around the plants. Easy. I had cayenne pepper. I generously sprinkled it around the planter, creating what I believed was an impenetrable spicy fortress. “Try it now, Gary.”

Gary tried it eleven minutes later.

He walked directly through the cayenne pepper, climbed into the planter, dug around for a few seconds, found another strawberry and sat on the edge eating it. Apparently squirrels don’t care. I opened the door and yelled, “HEY!” Gary jumped. Victory! Unfortunately, I startled myself with how loudly I’d yelled and dropped my coffee. The mug survived. The coffee did not. Gary watched from a tree. I swear he was laughing.

Plan B involved aluminum foil. According to someone on the internet named GardenQueen1974, squirrels hate walking on aluminum foil. GardenQueen1974 sounded trustworthy, so I carefully wrapped foil around the planter. The result looked less like gardening and more like I was attempting to communicate with extraterrestrials, but I had faith.

It worked for approximately six minutes.

Gary approached cautiously and stared at the foil while I watched from behind the curtain. He touched it and jumped backward. “HA!” I whispered triumphantly. Then he touched it again. Nothing happened. He climbed onto it, walked across it and finally sat directly on the foil to clean himself.

GardenQueen1974 was a liar.

I needed reinforcements. That’s when I remembered there was a plastic owl in the garage. Someone had given it to me years ago, presumably because they hated me and wanted me to own a plastic owl. Perfect. Predator. I placed the owl beside the strawberries. It looked intimidating. Well, moderately intimidating. Actually, it looked surprised. Its giant yellow eyes suggested it had just remembered leaving the oven on, but Gary didn’t know that.

Ten minutes passed. No Gary. Twenty minutes. Still no Gary. I had won. I made another coffee and stood proudly at the kitchen window admiring my squirrel-free strawberries when Gary appeared. He approached the planter, stopped and saw the owl. Gary froze. The owl stared at Gary. Gary stared at the owl. I stared at both of them. Nobody moved.

“This is it,” I whispered.

Gary slowly backed away and disappeared behind the fence. I celebrated prematurely. Approximately three minutes later, Gary returned with another squirrel. I don’t know what their relationship was, but I’m assuming Gary had gone to get Steve because Steve was better with owls.

They approached together. Gary stopped several feet away while Steve continued forward. The owl stared. Steve stared. Then Steve climbed onto the owl’s head. Gary immediately joined him. I now had two squirrels sitting on my predator deterrent. One scratched himself while the other ate a strawberry.

I closed the curtain. There are moments in life when dignity requires retreat.

At lunchtime, I went to the hardware store. “I need something to stop squirrels,” I told an employee. He nodded sympathetically. “Garden?” “Strawberries.” His expression changed to one of deep understanding. “They’re relentless.” I told him I knew. “They’re surprisingly intelligent.” “I KNOW.”

He showed me some mesh garden netting that he assured me should work. I bought two packages, zip ties, stakes and, for reasons I still cannot explain, a wind chime. By 2:30 that afternoon, I had constructed what can only be described as Strawberry Maximum Security Prison. Mesh surrounded the planter. Mesh covered the top. Every possible opening was secured with zip ties. I stood back and admired my creation. It was magnificent.

Gary appeared on the fence.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Try.”

Gary approached the planter, walked around it, climbed onto the deck railing, inspected the mesh and then disappeared underneath the deck. Everything became quiet. Too quiet. I waited. Nothing happened. Finally, victory.

I turned toward the house.

That’s when I heard rustling.

I spun around. Gary was inside the enclosure.

I still don’t know how.

He was sitting beside the strawberry plants like a prisoner who had voluntarily broken into jail. “HOW?” I demanded. Gary ate a strawberry. “HOW DID YOU GET IN THERE?”

I opened the enclosure to remove him. Gary panicked. I panicked. Gary ran toward me. I ran away from Gary. The mesh collapsed. The plastic owl fell over. The wind chime began ringing violently despite there being absolutely no wind. Gary escaped, I tripped over a watering can, and my neighbour chose that exact moment to walk outside.

She stared at the destroyed garden fortress. She stared at me. She stared at Gary sitting comfortably on the fence.

“Gardening?” she asked.

“Apparently not.”

That evening, I sat on the deck with a glass of lemonade and surveyed the wreckage. The foil fluttered sadly. The owl lay facedown. The mesh enclosure looked like it had survived a tornado. Eventually Gary appeared on the railing, and we looked at each other.

I sighed. “Fine.”

I placed a strawberry on the railing. Gary approached and picked it up. For the first time all day, we had peace. Perhaps this was the answer. Maybe we could coexist. Maybe there was enough room in this world for both of us. Maybe Gary and I had finally reached an understanding.

Then Gary dropped the strawberry, climbed into the planter and dug up an entire plant.

“OH, COME ON!”

Gary ran. I chased him across the deck wearing one slipper. My neighbour started laughing, and somewhere in the distance, I swear GardenQueen1974 was probably sitting peacefully beside her completely squirrel-free strawberries.

That was the day I learned an important lesson about nature: You don’t own a garden. You simply finance one for squirrels.