My profession, “Shrink by day” sometimes spills over into my personal life, and apparently also into the way I see the wildlife around my house. It’s a way to deflect some of the awfulness I see, making it easier to cope with. So sometimes I psychoanalyze squirrels. Had I known then what I know now, I might have skipped the analyzing and gone straight to kung fu.
But I digress.
I walked onto my deck one morning and saw a fuzzy brown squirrel digging in one of my patio chair cushions. Adorable, if you like vandalism. I figured he probably had some type of anxiety disorder, the way he booked it like Justin Bieber with a carton of eggs.
“Justin” turned halfway across the yard, let out a shrill burst of chatter and twitched as if he had surprised himself. Tourette’s? Nah, probably not. Also, Justin was alone, so maybe he’d been stigmatized by his squirrel community.
Fuck those bastards, Justin, and your squirrel society. I flipped the first cushion over and set an old bag of craft store batting on top of it. I’ll help you build your nest, Justin. I understand. But in the morning, the batting was on the ground and there was a new hole in the cushion beneath. And later, in spite of spraying cayenne pepper onto the torn cushions, I found new holes in the other chairs, a full five holes now.
Maybe he’s obsessive compulsive.
I went to the store and got a few live traps, the kind where there’s a little trapdoor to catch renegade Justin for deportation. I went to bed that night lulled into complacency by the conviction that the following morning I would see him in the cage and could move him to a location more conducive to his squirrel happiness and my sanity.
The next morning, I saw him eating peanut butter off his paws ON TOP OF THE CAGE. Next to a pile of cushion stuffing. I don’t know if squirrels can smirk, but I swear this one did. Punk ass squirrel, running off the porch with a handful of my cotton. Again.
Exasperated, I sat down on the cushion and promptly got an acorn stuck where the sun don’t shine. DEAR GOD THE PAIN! It was like someone stabbed me in the crotch. It hurt too much for me to even find the humor in the fact that I had just been injured from having nuts too close to my vagina. I leaped up and saw that little asshole staring at me from halfway across the yard.
Smirking. Definitely smirking.
He’s not anxious or depressed. He’s manipulative. Playing on my kindness for pity while planning a takeover of the cushion empire I created. He’s a narcissist. A fucking acorn abuser. “Justin Bieber” no longer seems an appropriate name for this master level of annoyance; I will call him “Rush Limbaugh.”
The next day, every cushion was torn, and my patience was wearing thin. While I made breakfast, he hopped onto the chair and watched the house.
I let the dog out. Fuck it. I couldn’t look, despite the fact that I still couldn’t sit right from all the nutty vagina injuries. I expected to hear barking, the scuffling of tiny claws on the wood. But there was just… silence. I peeked out the door.
The dog was sitting on the ground next to the chair watching Rush pull the stuffing from the cushion and throw it onto the deck. He’s not building a nest; he’s fucking with my emotions. And my ninety pound pit-bull/mastiff mix is now his bitch.
This time, he just looked at me when I walked out. It wasn’t until I was a foot from the chair that he leaped off and ran for the trees. He didn’t even seem all that nervous anymore. Maybe it had all been a ploy. Maybe Rush is a goddamned sociopath.
Maybe he’s just an asshole.
Maybe if I managed to grab his tail I could nun-chuck his ass into oblivion. Maybe a drop kick to his swarthy jowls would do it. And then I realized I was considering trying to drop kick a fucking squirrel.
What in the fresh hell was happening to me? When had I degenerated from a logical, reasoning being into trying to figure out the best way to karate chop a rodent? And more importantly, what did that say about my own mental health? Did I have delusions of grandeur to begin with, thinking I was better than this fucking squirrel? Was I the one with the anxiety, the obsession?
Fuck it. I sneered at Rush and went back inside.
I removed the cushions altogether and have been too cheap to buy another set, since I know they will go the way of the first set. I still see his jerk ass sitting outside the window on top of the barren chair, watching the house and chattering to my dog, who I have come to believe is in cahoots with him. Some days I expect to see her yanking stuffing from our living room couch, playing enabler for Rush’s prick obsession.
Sometimes the kids watch Rush from inside the house. They think he’s adorable. “Look at his cute little face, momma! Can we feed him, momma? Can we bring him in?”
No, kids, we can’t keep him. Rush is an asshole.
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“Megsanity” is the alias of a licensed clinical therapist who has spent the majority of the last ten years working as the Clinical Director/Vice President of Clinical Operations for a JCAHO accredited mental health facility. She needed an anonymous outlet where it was acceptable to drop the F-bomb like it’s hot, so she started Megsanity. Women, Psychology and Expletives, a blog that strives to promote an understanding of female psychology through recent and anthropological research, girl power, expletives, sarcasm and sexual innuendo. You can also find her on Facebook.
1 Comment
LOL. Welcome Meg!