Today is one of those beautiful fall days that you just love being outside for. It’s about 75 degrees, partly sunny, and a little breezy which makes the leaves blow around like in a Charlie Brown cartoon. As I sit here on our patio, I can hear the leaf blowers blowing and the garbage truck making its rounds through the neighborhood because it’s trash day. It’s all great until I look over at our empty garbage cans, each with little holes eaten out of the left top corner. Effing squirrels. Those fat little effers dig into our garbage every day, driving our cats crazy while they sit in the window watching them. It’s not like they’re cute and adorable. No, they’re rodents that look at me with those beady eyes while munching on their latest score, challenging me through my kitchen window, like, what are you gonna do about it lady? And on top of that, they’re messy eaters so they leave food bits all around the cans which attracts the birds. Then the birds will flock around our cans and crap all over the place. Effing birds.

Okay, so this started out nice but turned into a big ol’ complaint about our local wildlife. Now a big-ass cloud is rolling in as if on cue. We need to fix this squirrel problem. My husband isn’t afraid of much but he’s squeaked a couple of times when a squirrel would jump out of the can when he’s about to open the lid. Yikes! All the more reason he’s responsible for taking the trash out. I get anxious just thinking about that.

So now the clouds are parting (on cue again) as I think of how to fix our cans. I’ve decided to accept this challenge. Jen vs. Squirrels has begun. Game on squirrels! Game on!