Last Laugh

Image Gallery DARREN THOMPSON

Man Straight Jacketed After Attempting to Detonate Stick of Dynamite Strapped to Birdfeeder

No, this headline has not yet appeared in any local Long Island newspapers, but it'll come soon if my uncle doesn't resolve a crisis that would have him tearing out his hair if he had any. For the past year he has been dealing with a problem that has plagued mankind ever since it started building bird feeders: the damned squirrel.

To protect the identity of my Uncle Joe, I will refer to him here as "the crazy guy with the stick." After 60 years living in Canarsie, Brooklyn (not unlike Walden Woods, if Walden Woods were made of cement and hot garbage), then mild-mannered Uncle Joe and Aunt Betty decided to move out to their version of woodland paradise to get back in touch with Mother Nature.

His first endeavor in the wilds was the construction of a cute little red birdhouse with a hand-painted sign reading Home Tweet Home. He proudly nailed it to a tree, filled it with birdseed, and retired for the evening, knowing that he had done his part in the care and preservation of our winged friends—"bolds," as he would say.

He woke up the next morning to a discovery as horrifying as finding a horse's head lying in his bed. The roof and one entire side of his brand new cute little red birdhouse had been chewed apart by some horrid beast that had eaten all the birdseed. The mauled sign now read "...eet...me." That was the moment Uncle Joe died and "the crazy guy with the stick" was born. He used to run with a gang back in his day, called the Fancy Boys or something, and he knew a challenge when he saw one. It was time to go to war.

He built a new series of birdhouses constructed with aluminum siding and tar-covered roofs (significantly less aesthetically pleasing than those of the red-painted ilk) and tried an incredible variety of techniques to keep "those bushy-tailed rats" out. He attached metal bars to the doorways ("They just pulled the things apart."); he rubbed aftershave, specifically Old Spice, on the perches ("Someone said it would repel them, but I think they liked the smell."); and he designed a complex trapping system involving wire and a coffee can that I honestly could not follow. And neither could the squirrels. I think they ate the can. The squirrels were winning, and Uncle Joe was losing—his mind.

And hostilities were escalating. It was getting personal. The squirrels, bored with plundering the bird feeder, decided to dig up the new tulip bulbs Uncle Joe had planted. "They just left them there on the front stoop, just to taunt me." They also made a chew toy of his new hose, and everyone knows you don't mess with a man's new hose. He was sure to crack soon, so I thought I'd pay him a visit.