Tales from WannaBea Farm

I once lived in a city with a beautiful courthouse surrounded by old, moss laden, oak trees filled with squirrels. The benches scattered around were always full of older, retired people and young mothers with their children, feeding the squirrels with peanuts bought from the peanut vendor located by the courthouse door. Every day the lawn would be full of people sitting on the benches, feeding the squirrels, while the children ran around trying to catch them. Now even though they were ALMOST tame, they were still very wary and would not let you touch them.

One bright morning one of the old men commented that there didn’t seem to be as many squirrels as there had been. People started looking around and sure enough, the square just didn’t have the squirrel populace that it had in the past. Where were the squirrels? Nobody seemed to know what had happened to them.

The city brought in the animal control officers to check it out but they couldn’t find a reason for the decline. They looked for dead squirrels, thinking that maybe there was a disease that was killing them off. No bodies were to be found, but something had to be happening to them.

They called in an expert from the state agricultural department. He came and captured some of the squirrels and ran tests on them trying to find an answer. All the squirrels were very healthy. So what on earth was happening to the squirrels?

The mayor had always enjoyed watching the squirrels from his office window as it seemed to help him think when he had a particular problem. Standing there at his window one sunny, spring day he noticed an elderly woman limping into the square. “She’s getting so old”, he thought, as he watched her pushing her walker ahead of her. She was one of the regulars and had been coming every day now for several years ever since her husband had died, and he had watched her as her health had steadily declined.

The old lady eventually found her favorite bench and settled in, sitting her purse on one side of her and laying her tote bag on the other side of her. The mayor continued to absent mindedly watch her as she removed what looked like a large rock from her tote and placed it next to her purse. She then began to meticulously arrange her tote bag with the snap-lock handles opened and facing the front of the bench.

“What on earth is she doing?” he asked himself. Giving her his full attention now, he watched as she placed a few peanuts just inside the mouth of the tote bag and then began luring a squirrel closer and closer, a peanut at a time until the now unwary squirrel was in the bag. Snapping shut the bag; she grabbed the rock and knocked the fat, little squirrel in the head.

The astonished mayor turned and ran down the stairs and caught up with the woman as she was putting her rock into her purse and preparing to leave. When she realized the was caught, she started crying, explaining to the mayor that her poor husband had always kept them supplied with fresh game and fish but now he was dead and she didn’t have enough money to buy meat, and even if she had the money she didn’t like store bought meat as much as fresh game. She couldn’t hunt as her old hands were so arthritic that she couldn’t hold the gun steady, much less pull the trigger but she could wield that rock and have her squirrel stew.

Don’t ever underestimate a little old lady!

This story does have a happy ending though. When some of the members of a local hunting club found out about her they decided to keep her in venison, rabbits, squirrel and fish year round. She never went hungry again.