Tis a sad day in squirreltown.....

Tragedy has hit my back yard once again....and not only once, but TWICE this weekend. You can see two dead as a doornail squirrels in this picture...one is at the left of the silver colored pole and could be mistaken for some leaves. This has been happening at regular intervals for the past.....oh, thirty years or so. I have REPEATEDLY asked our power company to PLEASE install squirrel guards on the transformer that is situated at the top of this pictured pole. So far my requests have fallen on deaf ears. I don't want the guard because I'm a lover of squirrels, mind you....but because of the inconvenience it causes when they create a power failure, preceded by an earth shaking boom that sounds like someone has pulled the trigger on a shotgun right next to you. This is the sound a transformer makes when it goes. Unfortunately, I have one located in the extreme corner of my yard.

When I first moved here I thought squirrels were really cute and I fed them....I even tamed a few. But after so many years of them destroying things.....they have actually become pests and I'm not so fond of them anymore. However I hate to see this sort of thing happen. I am, after all, an animal lover and they could have babies in a nest somewhere. Although I'm more apt to believe that they were males headed home after a long night out with the boys and were attempting to sneak in before the little woman noticed how late it was. Both of these deaths occurred very early in the day....between 6 and 8 a.m. I'm sure they will be sorely missed by their families.

The first one occurred early Saturday morning and we were without power for about 5 hours. I considered myself lucky it was for only that long since we had had a very strong storm a couple nights before that took down many wires and trees north of us. I'm sure the power company had more than enough to do with that mess. So before I could get my grandson to pick up the first squirrel and appropriately get rid of it, we had another one occur about the same time on Sunday morning! This waking up to no power is getting old. I need my coffee in the morning. Let me put more emphasis on NEED....I mean I REALLY need my coffee in the morning!! This time it took about 7 hours before it was restored. CHA CHING. Overtime galore.

So I am going to obtain the name of someone who has some importance in their job description at the power company and I'm sending them this photo. I am going to, once again, plead with them to please put up a squirrel guard or some sort of deterrent to keep this from constantly happening. It certainly would be a lot cheaper than paying overtime for their workers to come out on a Sunday to get our power back, not to mention all of the neighborhood being inconvenienced. We average between one and two occurrences a year and we've had two already and the summer is just starting. The squirrels here have no natural predators other than vehicles and their population has really gotten out of control. Unfortunately Mollie, even though I'm sure she's still a legend, is just too old to help out anymore.

On a brighter note....we had family movie night on Saturday night. My family stayed the night as it was HOT and they do not have central AC. So after supper we settled in and watched Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood. Wow, its sad to see that such a superhero of the past (Dirty Harry) has aged.....but then, so have we all. It was a good movie....Depending on where you live, its true to the ways of our society now. Lots of racial slurs but without them, the movie would not have been realistic. It shows firsthand what a horrible violent society we live in and that most people just run from it (relocate). Only problem with that is that someday we will run out of places to relocate to. Eastwood's character doesn't want to move and he's a bitter old man with a family that doesn't understand him and doesn't really want to be bothered with him unless they need something. Thank goodness for the small bits of comedy here and there to lighten things up a bit. It was a good movie, the ending is very thought-provoking. Would I want to buy it and keep it? No. Would I have been mad to have paid $8. to see it at the show? No. Do I feel like I'm a better person for having watched it? No. It was a good movie....but definitely not for all audiences. It did deliver a message and I wish it could help the way things are in today's society, but it won't.....and that part is sad.