Squirrels

There was a giant chicken coop at my grandmother’s ranch. I remember collecting eggs and watching my grandmother kill chickens for dinner. I liked the eggs part, not the chicken killing…although I always ate the chickens she killed. Anyway, this story takes place after there were no more chickens in that coop. Several steers were butchered a year before, and their entrails buried in the yard of the chicken coop. I never understood why they decided to bury them there. What it did was to attract ground squirrels for some reason. I guess they liked the old dried guts with grain and hay partly fermented in them. There were a lot of ground squirrels, and they made Swiss Cheese out of the chicken yard. My grandmother wanted to get rid of them.

My brother was about 12 years old, and I was about 9. We had been around firearms all our lives and knew how to use them safely. My brother was assigned to rid the place of the ground squirrels. Since I was 9, for some reason, they thought it not a good idea to let me use the .22 rifle to shoot the squirrels, so that job was left for my brother. I would have been no use in this task anyway, as I love animals and could not have done it. I still love animals and, to this day, do not kill. I even use live catch traps for mice. Yes, I do eat meat but believe in getting it the old-fashioned way, by going to the grocery store and getting it in packages wrapped in plastic.

There was a large stack of freshly bailed hay right next to the chicken coop. It was probably 20 feet high. I joined my brother on this day to take care of the squirrel problem. We climbed to the top of the stack. I served as an assistant spotter. When a squirrel would poke its head up out of the hole or climb out altogether, my brother would take aim and shoot it. He was a pretty good shot and rarely ever missed his target.

He shot the first one, and I started crying. I climbed down with my brother and collected the poor dead squirrel. I did a proper burial for it out in the field and placed a cross on the grave, crying all the while. I don’t know why I put crosses on their graves; I had never been to church in my life. I remember asking my parents why we never went to church. My father’s answer was because he and my mother met in church. I didn’t get it at the time.

So, after the burial, we both climbed back up on the haystack. A squirrel came out, and my brother shot another. I cried and collected the squirrel and did the burial thing. This whole cycle was repeated probably over seven times that day. My brother was hitting his target, and me crying each time.

Whenever my brother and I see each other, this is one of the memories we share and laugh about…those poor squirrels.

(true story)