Sammy's Last Lesson

Sammy's Last Lesson For the last eight years I have been in a war or a feud with another one of God's creatures, Sammy the Fat-assed squirrel, or just Sammy for short. I would never have had beef with him if he'd only left my shit alone. My house is in a suburb not too far from a forest preserve, meaning that my backyard has been a meeting place or slide-through at one time or another for Rocky the raccoon, Shady the opossum, the Bunny Empire, and once a distant relative of Wile E. Coyote. They have been rare visitors, but the number one villain and constant enemy has been Sammy. I've replaced my plastic village issued garbage cans at least three or four times, but to no avail. Sammy the Fat-assed squirrel chews a hole in the lid, just big enough to squeeze his fat ass in. He'll leave bones, crumbs, and fecal matter to show how much he enjoys dining at Chez Hayes. There have been a few times where he's invited a couple of buddies to dine with him, especially after a barbecue. Bastard. I know, squirrels don't live that long, so maybe some of these marauders have been sons, nephews, and grandsons, but they're his ilk, so I call them by his name. One day I spotted him perched on top of my garbage can, enjoying a piece of chicken. I picked up a rock and from thirty feet away, I threw a perfect shot. Whap! Knocked his ass to the ground, where he was stunned, monkey walking like Trevor Burbick during his fight with Tyson. I ran to the backyard to grab a shovel to finish his ass off for good. By the time I'd grabbed the shovel, he'd managed to stagger to my neighbor's small tree and drunkenly shimmy up. He jumped to a bigger tree and disappeared, having managed to escape. We didn't see him or any of his cousins for awhile, as if the word had been spread that our backyard was no longer their private eatery. Eventually, Sammy came back, and I repeatedly tried to end his life, but I always missed, my aim being thrown off by my anger. As Sammy would scamper through the trees above, I could swear I heard him laughing. For my daughter Kym's birthday this past February, we had a party. Whenever we have a gathering, I pull a spare garbage can out of my garage for the extra trash. If it fills up, I put it in the garage til garbage pick-up day, when it's taken to the curb with the other cans. On Kym's birthday, it wasn't used except for a few little things. I told Kym to let it get emptied, then wash it out and return it to the garage. Simple instructions that she swore she would follow. That was three months ago. I didn't think anything about that garbage can because I'd given instructions. Apparently, Kym missed the lesson, and the can was never put up, sitting beneath my basketball hoop for three months. Melted snow, rainfall, etc., filled the can. At a backyard party Saturday for that damned Kym, someone asked me where that putrid smell was coming from. The garbage can was the only place it could have been coming from. With the help of two guests, we carried that can out by my back fence, next to our statue of Mary, and we all thought something was looking at us through the murky, leaf-filled water. The next day, the temperature was almost a hundred degrees. I went out by the Mary statue and with my foot, I tipped the garbage can over. Out came water, leaves, a couple of plastic water bottles, and Sammy. I gagged at first, then I left him there, not knowing exactly what I should do. My cousin told me to leave the corpse there for a day to see what the sun would do in aiding with the decomposition of Sammy the Fat-assed squirrel. I told my daughter it was her fault for not doing what she was told. I even called her a murderer. On Monday, I ventured out to my back fence to see what remained of Sammy. There was nothing. The bloated thing of Sunday had been taken care of by Nature, and I cleaned up the scene of the crime, but not before offering up words of Faith for my fallen enemy. It seemed the right thing to do. After all of those years of warfare, Sammy had probably been trying to get into my can and had either slipped, fallen, or been pushed by an unseen hand into a garbage can full of water. The lessons in the demise of Sammy the floating squirrel are numerous. Don't trespass on the property of others. Do what you've been instructed to do WHEN you've been told to do it. Treat enemies as enemies until they are no longer matter. 😁 Everything is eventual, and it always works out in the end. The garbage can that was Sammy's Last Lesson is sitting out on my curb, waiting to be picked up on Garbage Day. On the side of it is a taped sign, written by my daughter Kym, but dictated by me. The sign reads “Please take this garbage can away and Sammy sleeps with the fishes.” I hope his fellow squirrels take the note to heart and decide to leave my garbage cans alone…