The great squirrel cabal conspiracy of '07

[marycrawford]

This is why it is a great thing that therienne has bought a house: because we get stories like these.

This last weekend, I raked for a couple of lunar years. It occurred to me, about an hour in, that a quarter acre of land is actually a lot of land, holy crap. Two hours in, I took a break to go buy another trash barrel and some lawn bags. Two and a half hours in, I discovered the spot, three feet wide in diameter, where apparently the neighborhood's squirrel cabal meets. It's nothing but a giant pit of spent acorn shells. About 4,000 of them, or so. I only managed to remove about a thousand before I backed away, exhausted, imagining them sitting around it in a giant circle, spitting out shells as they debate the finer points of nest building, human haranguing, and whether or not the vending machine six blocks over has any weaknesses that might allow a Snickers raid.