I admit it; I’ve grown especially fond of squirrels. They’re devious little brats, as they should be because they’re just trying to survive in a Charles Darwin world.
I have a bunch of them in my yard, and they are absolutely ingenious at stealing the bird food that I’ve set up for my feathered friends—they eventually figure out almost any device or measure I put out to stop them. (I finally found one that works: a reverse cone set up on the bird feeder that prevents them from jumping up on it. Thank me later.)
But don’t tell that to the odious bureaucrats in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s New York. They felt the need to take out Peanut:
Squirrels have earned my hard-earned respect, and when I open my office door in the morning as I get to work, and they’re outside in the yard giving me that little cute-eyed stare, I’m man enough to admit that I’m kinda touched.
It is understood that, for some, squirrels are pests and must be eliminated. I get it—I had family members back in the day who lived in Wyoming, and although the myriad gophers, or “picket pins” as we used to call them, were cute, they were negatively contributing to the situation and had to be taken out.
So we did what needed to be done, and we took care of that. Sometimes reality is hard.