Squirrels - Fluffy ****s

Story told to me by a mate who had a squirrel invading his house and garden.  I've re-spun the story for my own amusement.   Facts may have been circumvented during this process.
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Working at home is a breeze if you have the house to yourself.  You can sit there in your pants and quietly work / watch Jeremy Kyle / masturbate / all three at the same time.

If you have a colleague working at home, phone them up and at the same time, send them an instant message.  If you hear an ear-splitting 'new instant message ding' down the phone, it's a pretty sure sign that they're spending the day well away from their laptop and probably tugging over a Jeremy Kyle guest. Seeing your colleague in a new light now?

If the house is full of kids, not only is it poor form to do any of the above; you're not going to get any work done.  Wherever you secrete yourself off to, they'll find you and want to play Minecraft / print off some colouring-in, play on the swivel chair etc. etc.

But if you're working from home and you have to share the place with a squirrel, you're opening up a whole new world of pain.

Squirrels like open windows.   They like to go into open windows and look for food.   But once they're in, they can't get out - they haven't worked out that open windows work both ways.  Instead, they get panicked and do a wall-of-death run around the room, leaving a trail of shit and piss on all your walls.  Kind of like those 80s wallpaper strips we used to put up at waist height, only made out of squirrel piss. Or a dado rail made entirely of squirrel shit.  What has a hazelnut in every bite?  Your living room wall. 

If they get into your roof, it's even worse.  They use your insulation to weave ornate Baroque costumes and wigs and use your roof tiles to make giant platform boots.  Then, dressed like Elton John on his 50th birthday, they stomp around your attic all night.  FACT.

Luckily, in the UK it is legal to kill a squirrel.  You have to trap it and shoot it or simply shoot it.   It is also legal(ish) to shoot an airgun on your own propery.  Therefore, it should be pretty easy to get rid of your squirrel problem. You can pop a cap in its ass.  Whatever that means.  If it means what I think it does, then I'd have to say that I can't see the point of putting a contraceptive device up a squirrel's bottom. Pregnancy is very unlikely that way.

The lure of hunting is primeval and irresistible.  In many cultures, you're not a man until you've killed, eaten and worn your prey. In parts of Gloucestershire, you can add 'fucked' to that list.  Live or dead - doesn't matter.  Country ways.   Squirrel is edible so that's not a problem.  Wearing squirrel fur is more difficult - there's not a lot of it on a squirrel and the best you can do is make a rather tight little Davy Crocket beret / forage cap thing with little squirrely feet, tail and bollocks hanging down like the ornaments in Keith Richards hair.

Alternatively, you could use its skin as a kind of posing pouch - tuck each testicle into the skin of the back legs and use the body as a kind of fluffy condom.  The tail gets coiled up and velcros to your pubes as a kind of luxury fur merkin.  You can even animate it by travelling on a bus to get the squirrel to stand up.

You can get airguns over the internet.  Don't get an air pistol - they look so much like the real thing that if your neighbour sees you with it, they'll get the armed police round to shoot you.  Get an air rifle - ideally one that looks like a kids toy.  I shit you not - you can get a pink plastic air rifle.
It's pump action.  I imagine Freud's head would explode at the thought of a pink, pump-action gun.  It looks like a perfect toy for Little Miss Gun-Nut but if the neighbours see it, they're just going to assume (probably correctly) that you're a transvestite cowboy.  Far better that than having half the local police force looking down gun barrels at you.

As well as having an innocuous-looking weapon, you have to use stealth and camouflage.  You have to disguise yourself as a part of the garden.  For most of us, it's probably easiest to pretend to be a large chiminea.  Sooner or later, we all get to be that shape. Assume your chiminea pose and and then stand there - like the rock-hard sniper you clearly are not - until the squirrel comes into range.  Then shoot and miss.  Repeat until you get pissed off and buy a trap over the internet.

The trap will be (and should be) a humane trap.  Inhumane traps involve smashing, crushing and severing - and that's just the fingers of the guy setting the trap.  Humane traps are baited and capture the squirrel alive and unharmed.  Bait the trap with peanuts.  Do not make the mistake of baiting the trap with cashews.  Squirrels are terrible inverse snobs - they will simply kick the trap over and chitter "Fucking cashews! You middle-class ponce!" at you.  I've heard that in Cheltenham, it's the other way round.  If you put in cashews, they'll still kick the trap over but they'll snootily chitter "Cashews?  We want Macademias, you common oik!"

If the trap eventually works, you're going to have a the worst problem of all.   Up until now you were Travis Bickle, clearing out the vermin - the cold-blooded hunter of a pestilent foe.  But now you have big-eyed, innocent-looking, cute and fluffy Tufty at your mercy. It sits there, curled up and terrified, chittering to it's mates "Help! I've been trapped by a transvestite cowboy disguised as a garden heater and I've eaten all the Macademias!"

Can you shoot it in cold blood?  Even if takes the piss out of your pink gun (and it will - listen - you can hear it laughing at your shit gun), you simply don't have the heart to murder it.  So of course you let it go.  By way of thanks, it'll bite you, shit in your house and bugger off into your roof for a banging Elton disco party.

But....  by letting it go, you've broken the law.  Once an animal considered as vermin has been trapped, it must be killed - it cannot be released.  But how to kill it?

You have to kill it humanely.  For a human, I reckon the most humane way of killing someone would be to let them die like John Entwhistle, who died full of cocaine, underneath a groupie.   Whilst it would be possible to arrange a trip to Switzerland, where drugs, prostitution and euthanasia are all legal, this does seem like a lot of effort just for a squirrel.  However, for humans, this is a great business idea - "Entwhistle Tours - Go out with a smile on your face!" or "Entwhistle Tours - Go out with a bang!" or my favourite - "Entwhistle Tours - Spunk away your kids inheritance".  One for Dragon's Den maybe?

The obvious solution is to use a flame thrower.  Who doesn't love the smell of burning squirrel in the morning?  However, flamethrowers aren't easy to come by.  You could try the James Bond improv. flamethrower - a can of Lynx aerosol and a cigar - but frankly, you'll most likely blow yourself up.  And being found dead with a cigar, a can of Lynx, a caged wild animal and a pink gun is going to out-Michael Hutchence Michael Hutchence.

Sword?  Finally a use for those crap Ninja swords you bought when you had more money and even less sense.  But trying to stab a squirrel in a cage with a sword is going to make you look like the worlds cruellest magician.  Plus you'll need a lot of swords - squirrel move fast.  You're going to keep jabbing at it until the cage looks like the Game of Thrones version of KerPlunk.

 Breaking its neck?  You'll need thick gloves and a strong grip.  You have broadband - you'll be fine. Simply get the squirrel out of the trap and break its neck. Or, eventually get the squirrel out of the trap after being repeatedly bitten through the gloves and then watch as it escapes into your attic, via your lounge.

The only solution is to shoot it.  With your pink gun.  And you have to kill it first shot - right between the eyes.  Because, not only is it illegal to release a trapped squirrel, you can't injure it - you have to kill it.  Injuring squirrels is a big no-no.  Ask your masturbating colleague - the ad breaks in Jeremy Kyle are full of specialist claim companies. "Squirrels! Have you been injured by a middle-class ponce with a crap pink gun?  Did they deprive you of Macademias?  Did they try to make you eat Cashews?  Mr S. Nutkin of Cumbria was caught in a trap and sprayed with Lynx, causing him to smell like a teenager for days.  Thanks to us he was able to claim over a ton of peanuts in damages".

Bloody squirrels - it's the compensation culture gone mad