Squirrels

When we first moved into our home last December, we had no idea that Mariemont had so many squirrels!  They are literally all over the place, and the fact that our backyard has a large tree in it seems to make our backyard fairly desirable to the squirrels.  Last winter, the bane of our existence was one squirrel in particular who seemed to enjoy eating our garbage.  Actually, I should clarify that statement.  He enjoyed eating through our garbage can to get at our garbage.  

Brandon finally had to put a large piece of plywood over the garbage can and then put a heavy planter on top of that in order to keep this squirrel at bay.  Squirrels, however, are fairly intelligent, much to my surprise...and chagrin.  This same squirrel tried everything within its power to get around that plywood, even succeeding once at getting one of Nicholas's dirty diapers out of the garbage can.  That was sick, especially since I had some serious morning sickness at the time.  

In these two pictures, the squirrel is actually stalking the garbage can!

Yesterday Brandon, Nicholas, and I took a walk to the nearby UDF for some ice cream.  (Side note: we discovered that they are building a Porche/Volvo dealership in between the UDF gas station and a Dollar General...I'm not sure that's the coolest location they could have picked.)  As we were walking home, this squirrel started pelting Brandon with some acorns.  Brandon was annoyed and looked up and essentially told the squirrel to stop throwing nuts at him (what he actually said sounded a little vulgar, thus the paraphrase).  Amazingly, the squirrel stop dropping them.  We started to walk again, when this furry mass fell out of the tree from one of the higher branches and landed with a loud thud on the grass right next to us.  We stood there stunned for a moment, but when we realized that the squirrel was okay and it scurried away, we burst out laughing.  It was one of those really bizarre moments in life, which seem to happen to me fairly regularly.  It could have been pretty poor timing for me, though.  I'm at the point in my pregnancy where, due to the fact that I have a little baby sitting right on my bladder, things taking me by surprise could have disastrous results.  Fortunately that disaster was narrowly avoided since we were just outside our back door, and I could run inside the house.  Nicholas also thought it was pretty funny because after the squirrel fell out, Brandon said something to the effect of "that was a loud thump!" and Nicholas thought the word "thump" was the funniest word in the world.  Now I just have to say the word "thump" and he bursts out into hysterical giggles!  Never a dull moment around here!