We were at my youngest brother’s house for Thanksgiving and as happens at these family get-togethers, after awhile the stories flow as fast as the beer and wine.  My DSIL is a hoot and a fabulous storyteller and this is my version of her version, more or less…

Squirrel eating cookie from pinterest.com

If you live in the northwest Chicago suburbs, you might have seen this in your neighborhood a few weeks ago.  An attractive dark-haired, blue-eyed extremely well-dressed, middle-aged woman arrived home in the late afternoon to find in her yard the biggest squirrel you have ever seen with his head stuck in a box and those white packing peanuts scattered everywhere, to the point that it looked like the lawn was covered with snow.

She muttered obscenities under her breath and maybe even yelled them, all the while stomping her feet and waving her arms to try to get the squirrel to leave her package alone.   (This is my middle-school teaching, Irish sister-in-law whom I know can curse with the best of them.  I’m sure her language was extremely colorful, what with all that pent up aggression from dealing with 7th and 8th graders all day.)

A perfect circular opening had been chewed into the top of the Girl Scout Candy and Nut box order that UPS had apparently left on the porch, and there was not a single Dark Chocolate Caramel Cap with Sea Salt left.  The tin of mixed gourmet nuts had either teeth or claw marks in it and my DSIL decided it could not be saved, even to be given as a neighborly gift for the holidays 😉

She hoped that the chocolate would affect the squirrel like it does dogs and he would die a horrible, horrible chocolate-induced death, but alas, he seemed hale and hearty when he ambled away in search of other delicacies.  My brother said he was just grateful not to come home to find the body of a dead, bloated rodent in his yard…