Knights Becoming and a Lady in Waiting

Oak Trees and Neighborly Squirrels

I love my oak tree.  No, no, I'm not a tree-hugging, granola-munching, Save Our Mother Earth person.  I just love my tree.

In summer, the leaves provide ample shade to keep our backyard several degrees cooler than our front yard.  In fall, the falling leaves provide mulch material for my garden.  In spring, when the rains hit, the falling limbs provide firewood for our backyard campouts.  Oh, and did I mention the acorns?

Our tree provides enough acorns to feed at least a dozen squirrels with surplus.  I can verify this because I have seen at least a dozen squirrels in my backyard, but we still have crunchy, hard little acorns underfoot.  An industrious person would probably just rake up the acorns with her leaves, but since I avoid raking my leaves until I absolutely have to, my acorns just sit there.  Crunching.

Every time I step on one, I stop and think, "This could feed a friendly little woodland creature, if only one was around to stop and eat it."  Then I look around for one of said woodland creatures, only to find it in my neighbor's yard-- eating store-bought corn.

Alright, it's bad enough that the squirrels get finicky and would rather eat the birdseed from the feeder than the acorns, but I do believe my neighbors are spoiling them!  If all was right with the world, the squirrels would be industriously hoarding all my acorns in some stash for the winter.  Instead, they turn up their noses at the acorns and drag the empty corn cobs into my yard, depositing them at my front door much the same way a cat deposits a dead mouse or bird.  The corn cob is easier to clean up, but I feel just as much dread when I see it.

There are acorns going uneaten, unstashed, untouched.  I will crunch when I mow the lawn.

I have considered the very unneighborly action of trespassing in my neighbors' yards and removing their squirrel feeders.  I have debated buying up all the feed corn in a sixty mile radius and sending it to poor starving squirrels in Ethiopia.  I've even debated removing the air from my neighbors' tires so they can't replenish their supply.  For some reason, the Holy Spirit never lets me get any farther than the plotting stage before I'm getting some major jabs to my conscience and doing some serious confessing.  I don't entirely get it.  I mean, I'm trying to tend to the earth and protect the delicate balance God put in motion.  Surely a little trespassing, stealing, and vandalism is nothing in comparison.

Ouch!  Okay, okay!  Jab any harder and I'll have a concussion, or whatever you get from a severe blow to the psyche.

Anyway, I need to come up with a solution to the acorn problem that does not involve gathering them all to make tasty acorn-paste pancakes or stringing them on strings to hang on my Christmas tree.  Letting the boys shoot them into other yards with slingshots is probably not a good idea either.  It's really quite the dilemma.

I guess I'll just have to import more squirrels.

Heres a suggestion!

1:03 AM, Sep. 7, 2006 .. Posted by Grundo

Have your boys throw the acorns at the squirrles anytime they eat teh corn! Violenece solves everything!
OUCH! MY CONSIENCE!