Denny, Bringer of Death

[denny]

Whilst happily sitting watching Battlestar Galactica on DVD with libellum and romauld just now, I heard a scuffling sound in the kitchen. Glancing across, we all saw that bloody squirrel*, perched on the edge of the bin, making a daring daytime food run. The squirrel had already been the subject of discussion once today, due to it having crapped all over the kitchen when we went out to buy ingredients for breakfast.

* for those not on libellum's friends list, a brief summary: squirrel falls in through roof-hatch in kitchen. Squirrel runs around like a lunatic, breaking things and pissing everywhere. libellum swears a lot. Squirrel eventually presumed to have left flat via open back door, but this some weeks later turned out to be not the case. More swearing.

This time, I think I actually heard something inside libellum's head go 'twang' as it snapped, and so we hastily started making plans to rid the world flat of squirrels.

Our eventual plan included pinning sheets over the open archway and open hatch between the kitchen and frontroom to stop it having the run of the entire place, then moving everything away from the fridges that the bloody thing has been hiding behind, then moving both the fridges, then engaging in a comedy slapstick-style chasing of squirrel around kitchen - libellum armed with a broom, and me with a mop - in the hope of getting it to run out of the conveniently open back door.

This didn't get us very far, other than revealing a couple of new hiding places which we promptly dismantled, and also revealing an astoundingly large puddle of piss that the squirrel had left along one wall on its earler excursion.

After herding it in the direction of the open back door two dozen times, only to see it turn around at the last minute and dive back around us into the (warm, food-filled, perfect hibernating location known to us as the) flat, we eventually conceded that it wasn't going to be chased out, and so we started trying to kill it instead.

The comedy pretty much left the event entirely when I finally managed to see a pattern in its movements, anticipate which way it was about to run, and subsequently battered it to death with a metal pole that we'd found in one of the corners it had gone to ground in earlier in the chase.

Of course, I now feel like a complete and utter bastard. Even when it was running around making us look like idiots, with the place stinking of squirrel piss, it was small, cute, furry, and cute. And cute. And then I bashed its head in with a metal stick. It still looked furry and cute, as well as more than faintly accusatory, as it laid there twitching and dying, with blood dribbling out of its mouth.

So. Hopefully libellum will now get over the nervous twitch she'd been developing whenever anyone used the word squirrel, and the other one that she had for whenever anything moved in the kitchen area. I, on the other hand, am going to find it very hard to look the next squirrel I meet in the eye.

We now return to our regular scheduled programming.

Comments

[grandwazooo.livejournal.com]

the bad news:

you killed it so now you have to eat it. 'dems da rulez!

the good news:

squirrel is apparently very tasty!

[CoBD]DNNY FRAGS xXxSQRLxXx

[hythloday.livejournal.com]

The comedy pretty much left the event entirely when I finally managed to see a pattern in its movements, anticipate which way it was about to run, and subsequently battered it to death with a metal pole that we'd found in one of the corners it had gone to ground in earlier in the chase.

You now have a perfect excuse when one of your girlfriends whinges that you're playing Quake instead of paying attention to them.

[cavalorn.livejournal.com]

You are so banned from the Tufty Club.

[kaz-pixie.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't feel guilty, squirrels are hell. Ask any park wood resident at UKC.

[cyrus-ii.livejournal.com]

I had to kill mice.

lots of them. I sympathise.

we had humane traps, but they would get in, eat the bait and panic when the trap closed, causing them to sprint around the room flailing wildly (once escaped from hopelessly ineffectual trap) and come to rest, say, in your food or on your bed. We had a long-term plan to kill them in this way by inducing chronic anxiety disorder, but our nerves were already frayed by my housemate's habit of leaving scalpels everywhere, so we came off worse.

we went with snappy traps rather than poison as they are faster and the mice do not crawl into inaccessible places to die. we got 17 in the end.

in other news, at least the squirrel did not die of starvation, a horrible disease or being poisoned and spending about an hour in agony. other than extremely efficient dogs or well aimed cars, you furnished the thing with about the least painful death it could have hoped for.

[djlongfella.livejournal.com]

Killing ain't all it's cracked up to be,
But you gave it more than fair chance to escape / be evicted.

[bioguyver.livejournal.com]

Although a tragic yet necessary outcome that post had both me and the missus in stitches. I have been in a similar situation with a Cat and I just had the perfect picture in my head of the comedy that was involved.

Would you have felt any less guilty if you had got it with the car?

[sevenhelz.livejournal.com]

there, there.

[kathrid.livejournal.com]

To cheer you up. Apart from the furry tail squirrels are physically almost indistinguishable from rats. In fact people occasionally phone up wildlife centres to tell them about these amazing bald-tailed sqirrels they've been feeding in the park at night, only to be quickly disabused of this silly notion.

So think of it as you've just killed a rat in disguise.

[easternpromise.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. :( Don't feel guilty about it - I think you gave it more than enough chances to get away, and if you'd called in pest control they'd have poisoned it, whch would have been a long and quite painful death. At least your way was quick and relatively painless!

(PS: BSG ++)

[aiwendel.livejournal.com]

oh.
I just read to the end of this having skimmed the first paragraphs earlier.
I feel sick.
:(

[fellcat.livejournal.com]

If that's a grey you've killed, then well done.

(If it was a red (unlikely), then you've broken the law: reds are protected.)

PS:

[fellcat.livejournal.com]

(If it was a red (unlikely), then you've broken the law: reds are protected.)

Greys are legally vermin BTW.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was a tree-rat, not a red. It was still cute and I still feel kinda guilty.

(although less so since someone on libellum's journal pointed out that if a human was hiding in your house, stealing your food, and pissing and crapping on the floor at night, you'd probably give them a fairly thorough kicking when you got hold of them too) :)