An Uneasy Alliance

Joe "Who Me?" the Squirrel

I am not a fan of squirrels.  In my opinion, squirrels are annoying rats that don't respect my property's boundaries, chatter at me angrily when I chase them up nearby trees, and frequently tease me with empty peanut shells tossed haphazardly throughout my yard.  And don't even get me started on the fact that Sister used to feed three squirrels (named Joe, Fatty, and Mangy Mike) peanuts every day the year before I was born (she stopped when Joe tried to break through the kitchen window on Thanksgiving morning looking for his breakfast).

Despite my reservations, every summer the squirrels and I come to an uneasy agreement.  I guess even the most hated adversaries can occasionally find themselves linked by a common goal.  And what is that goal?  The consumption of peaches.

The people who live behind me have a peach tree.  For most of the year, it's rather disappointing; it grows leaves in the spring and drops them in the winter.  However, in late spring, it starts growing fruit and that's when the fun begins.  As soon as the peaches reach optimal ripeness, the squirrels descend on the tree and, completely ignoring the plastic bags the homeowners tie to the tree's limbs in a futile attempt at protecting the crop, pick most, if not all, of the fruit. Then, with peaches clenched firmly in their mouths, the squirrels climb up the large maple tree also in the neighbor's yard, transfer over to the tree on my property, and find a perch directly above my yard.  After taking one, maybe two, bites, the squirrels then drop the remaining peach into my yard.

Here's where I enter into the equation.  Every day throughout the entire summer, I check my yard for those discarded peaches (along with lizards, squirrels, bunnies, and other potential interlopers).  And when I find them, in any degree of wholeness or freshness, I feast on the fruit (I try to avoid eating the pit because, when I do, I inevitably end up throwing up not only the pit, but the peach and the last meal I ate as well which is so not cool).

Ma doesn't like this alliance; she doesn't think I should consume half eaten peaches coated with squirrel spit (just another case of Ma and me not seeing eye to eye on a topic).  At first, this disagreement meant that whenever Ma was around I had to find and eat my peaches as quickly as possible lest she catch me and pull the slimy ball of fruit from my mouth (and haste, I discovered, makes one prone to accidentally swallowing the pit).  Now, however, Ma and I have worked out a system which benefits both of us (but mostly me).  For every peach I find and spit out I get a cookie.  This might not seem like much, but when you consider that at the peak of peach season I'm averaging four discoveries an outing, those cookies start adding up.  And sometimes, when I'm really fast, I can manage to sneak in a few bites of peach before I spit out the rest to collect my cookie (shhhh...don't tell Ma).