Halloween Pumpkins vs Squirrels: A Seasonal Battle
Cooler nights and the leaves changing their colors, signals it’s time to set out the Halloween decorations.
Our neighborhood is filled with creepy skeletons emerging from the ground and giant black spiders climbing massive webs. The pumpkins, however, are disappearing off porches before they have a chance to become Jack O’ Lanterns. Who’s taking the pumpkins?
I take a walk around the corner and catch the thieves in the act.
Fresh pumpkins set out on the doorstep, waiting to be carved as the magic night for trick or treating approaches, are providing midday feasts for the pesky squirrels. Those squirrels must be getting really fat because they have singlehandedly devoured three of my pumpkins and I see others on the street with sizeable holes. One of the three pumpkins has been completely consumed.
Maybe I should have purchased gourds instead of pumpkins, but I’ve already made the commitment. The squirrels are brazen. I’ve tried sprinkling vinegar to make the skin less tasty and I’ve put glue on the spots where they’ve started to bite. Nothing seems to work.
All I can do is watch them jam the seeds in their mouths when I think they I’m not looking and I remember the children’s story by Beatrix Potter The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin.
The major character Squirrel Nutkin is very impertinent to a wise old owl, chanting annoying riddles, and eventually pays a price. I can imagine that Potter was inspired by the brazenness of squirrels she observed when crafting her tale. (Click on one of the pictures to read the story.)
The squirrels don’t just eat our pumpkins. They eat tomatoes and any other edible vegetable they can find. After the sunflowers have bloomed, they jump on the stems to steal the ripening seeds.
Squirrel stealing an entire pod of Sunflower Seeds in front og our house.
I am a Beatrix Potter fan and animals can provide fine inspiration for stories. I think one of the reasons I’ve always liked Beatrix Potter stories is because they were inspired by what she observed, plus she had a droll sense of humor. Just watch the natural world around you, including wild creatures, and imagine what they are thinking and saying. Perhaps a squirrels ate too many pumpkin seeds and now has a belly ache. It’s nice to imagine. Or because this is the time of year for scary stories, maybe the squirrels get out of control and become transformed into something else. Think of the damage a giant squirrel could do.
WRITING PROMPT: Write a scene or story about an animal you observe near the place where you live. Observe the way they move and the noises they make. Try writing the scene from the animal’s perspective. Write the scene again, from the point of view of a human interacting with the animal. What did you learn? Try different moods, humorous vs. scary. The introduction of an animal into a story can change the intensity, intersperse levity or add fear. Keep experimenting and keep writing. That’s how you improve your craft.
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Published by Nadja Maril
Nadja Maril’s prose and poetry has been published in literary magazines that include Change Seven, Lunch Ticket, Thin Air, and The Compressed Journal of Creative Arts.. She is the author of Recipes From My Garden, a chapbook published by Old Scratch Press that includes both poetry and creative nonfiction prose. Author of two children’s books illustrated with paintings by her father Herman Maril, as well as Who IS Santa? for which she did her own illustrations, Nadja is also the author of two reference books on antique American Lighting, published by Schiffer. A former journalist and magazine editor, Nadja has an MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine. To read more of her work and follow her weekly blog posts, visit Nadjamaril.com https://nadjamaril.com/ View more posts
Originally published at http://nadjamaril.com on October 21, 2024.
