A Little Nutty

Hey mom!

First off, I love you.

Second, I’m pretty sure there’s a statute of limitations on stuff you can ground me for!

Third, remember I’m the least likely of your three kids to put you in a home when your too old and paint the bathroom with feces like Grammy. That and I’m the only one who has provided you with a grandchild.

After getting that out of the way, it's confession time. I guess just not one confession but a few. My first one goes way back to before we moved out of our first house. I was in kindergarten and you, and dad already had a few instances where I tried to bring random things into the house as a pet. Mostly bugs, but occasionally, it would be like a frog or a snake. I remember you really freaked out about the snake! I learned some choice words that day and my butt was sore from sitting on the time out stair for a good hour after that. It was made very clear I needed to stop bringing in animals. Which makes the following confession that much worse, because I knew this was going to be way worse than the snake.

For the following few weeks or months, I really can’t remember how long it took me, I would feed my snacks to the squirrels out in our yard. Eventually, I got to the point where they would let me pet them or they would eat from my hand. Now, this probably would have been fine if it wasn’t for the fact that it was happening at the same time that us kindergarteners were learning about the seasons. One particular lesson that stuck out to me was animals and plants went to sleep during winter. You should remember that one cause you wrote that lesson plan!

Anyways back to the squirrel situation. I, as a small innocent child, still new to the ways of the world, did not see any nice warm places for my new squirrel friends to sleep. With what I learned from your excellent lesson plans, which you should be proud stuck so well, I knew that after fall came winter. Winter meant ice, snow, not being able to leave the house without being bundled up to the point where movement was impossible, and a lack of food for my little fur buds. Clearly, that was an issue that I could not stand idly by for! So, I decided that our house would have to become theirs as well.

I spent the rest of that afternoon collecting all the acorns that I could find, which consisted of whatever I could fit into my pockets and underwear. For the record, I am now aware that the underpants thing was weird, but in my defense, they do not make pockets big enough for all the things young kids want to stuff into them. With undies full of winter sustenance, I waddled inside and upstairs to go scout out a place where I could set the squirrels up. At first, I was going to stick them under my bed, but I remembered the live ant collection incident. I was pretty sure if the squirrels populated like the ants, you would notice them crawling around my stuffed animal collection a lot faster than the bugs. So I came up with plan B which was the attic. I figured this was perfect, it was dark and big, and none of my stuffed animals could get ruined. With that figured out, I dumped the acorns and waited until the next time I would go feed the squirrels.

Catching the squirrels took a little longer than the acorn gathering and luckily for me you had my cousin babysit me frequently enough that I was able to get them into the house and upstairs to the attic without you noticing. She wasn’t exactly the most attentive babysitter. In the end, I was pretty sure I got away with my great squirrel rescue, especially when you continued not to notice them for a few days after.

But then came the scratching inside of the walls…followed by the smell two days later. You definitely noticed then. So long story short, I am the reason that for 2 months we couldn’t get the stench of death out of our house. That and I’m pretty sure all the Christmas decorations that were ruined from what you thought was mouse pee, were really ruined from squirrel pee. I shall end this confession with an I’m sorry and please remember points one through three from the beginning of this letter.

Love you!

Signed,

A little Nutty

P.S Remember that time I came out of the attic screaming and dad went up and found a live squirrel. I had thought both the squirrels had died and I was more than sure one of them came back to haunt me.