I love to bake. And I love peach pie. So it’s a natural that I would make an awesome peach pie from the juicy peaches on my tree. I have fought off the mangy, rat-faced, no-good, low-life, beady-eyed, scum-sucking, peach-eating squirrel for weeks with my plastic snake, putting beach balls in the tree, tying cd’s to the branches to spin in the wind, I put my plastic hawk next to the tree, and a trap underneath with peach bait inside. All for nothing. The squirrel never gave up, finding new and inventive ways to steal my peaches.

Even though he had already taken most of the fruit off my tree, I was happy to get what I could. I managed to pick a few last week but it was too early and they weren’t sweet at all. So I decided to wait, watching them every day, squeezing to see if they were ready, happy that the squirrel was leaving some good ones for me. In fact there were a couple of branches with rows of peaches… just enough for my pie.

Besides the 15 peaches here, there were still a few on the rest of the tree. I checked them all on Saturday and decided my luck wouldn’t last forever so I would just pick them all on Sunday, ready or not, and make my pie. Sunday morning, I got a basket and headed for the tree ready to pick them all, starting with those long branches with 15 peaches. This is what I found…

WHAT!?! It can’t be! They were all here yesterday. I thought I had the wrong branch and pulled down the other branches – nothing. Every single peach was gone, even the other ones down below. There’s no way one squirrel could eat that much in one day. What did he do? Sound a battle horn to call every squirrel in the neighborhood to come to my house? “Hey, squirrel homies! The peaches are ready now! Let’s move!” Somebody give me a shovel. I’m digging up the tree. If I can’t have it, nobody else will either. I suppose it will leave a big hole in the ground and that could be a hazard. Gee, I hope nothing falls into the hole. What if he couldn’t get out?  What if a net accidentally fell on top of him? Yes, I need a shovel… and some champagne.