Squirrel Bait and Other Stories

by Thomas P. Hanna

  * * *

  The next evening as Ralph and Cindy Sue sat together on the porch swing he told her about his new project. “A couple of days ago another person told me that I’m crazy. Squirrel bait is what he called me. Now that set me thinking. The reference to squirrels that is. My father’s oldest brother, Uncle Charles, bought a piece of land in the country a few years back. It had a stand of trees, an overgrown field, and a section near the house cultivated as a vegetable patch. Uncle Charles had a peculiar passion for nuts and he bought this place precisely because the stand of trees was a mixed planting of nut trees - walnuts, pecans, and Chinese chestnuts. The stand was supposed to produce good crops of harvestable nuts each year.”

  “That sounds like a nice place.”

  “How well the nut crops did after that first year none of us was ever sure because about all we heard from Uncle Charles was how the squirrels got all the nuts. Those nuts that were supposed to be his fortune. He had it all planned out. He’d just fill bags with the nuts and haul them off to the market. No plowing, no weeding, no spraying. The trees would do all the work and he only had to go in and haul off the finished product in the fall. Just shake the bounty from the trees as it were.

  “The first year no one heard much about the squirrels, only about how good the crop looked and about how you had to be really smart to have the foresight to set yourself up in a good business that required a minimum of work, and how he would probably give up his regular job in town once he really got going as a nut supplier.

  “The second year the squirrels arrived. None of us ever actually saw much of them because we seldom visited Uncle Charles once nuts were about all he would talk about. But we heard about the squirrels, oh yes we did. About how they were destroying his so carefully planned out business. He’d grumble, ‘Those pesky bushy-tailed tree rats carry off more nuts than they leave and they sample half the ones they do leave behind. Hardly makes it worth going out to harvest ‘em.’ Each time one of us would talk to him, there’d be more talk about how bad the squirrels were and less talk about the crop and the possibilities of the no-work nut industry. We didn’t ask too many questions. What was the point? We just drew our own conclusions and thought our own thoughts.”

  “You were being considerate not prying into his business too much,” Cindy Sue said.

  “This chance comment the other day made me think of Uncle Charles and his grove of trees. Here surely is a problem worth assaulting. If Uncle Charles has problems, then the nut industry as a whole must have much bigger ones. With shortages of everything being reported in the newspapers we’ll probably have a shortage of nuts and nut products soon if we don’t cut down on the competition from the animals. I figure that we still have a chance to head off the problem before it becomes a crisis if I put my mind to finding a solution.”

  “That’s what you do so well, Ralph.”

  “To put myself in the proper frame of mind I went out and bought a can of assorted salted nuts to munch on as I contemplated the problem. I also consulted an expert, a biologist friend, who lent me some books about animal behavior. My usual approach is to read a little on the subject and then just let the problem sort of percolate in the back regions of my mind.

  “It occurred to me at one point that I had muffed it. You know how it is, one of those nagging thoughts that insist on trying to creep into the back of your mind even though you resist it. My mistake was that I’d bought the wrong kind of nuts. Those were shelled. If I really wanted to think like a squirrel, I needed to munch on nuts that I had taken the shells off myself. I also realized that maybe I didn’t even have the kinds of nuts any but city park squirrels like since most of the ones in this can were peanuts and they don’t grow on trees. I hadn’t done my homework. I hadn’t checked on squirrels’ preference for different kinds of nuts.”

  “I see your point.”

  “Suddenly it struck like a proverbial lightning bolt. Shell-less nuts! That was it!” Ralph continued. “One of the behavior books explained that many animals prefer to work a bit for their food and prefer to shell their nuts and seeds themselves. In fact they eat significantly less if you give them only pre-shelled food. So there was a solution. Grow nuts without shells. Then the squirrels won’t eat as many.”

  “That makes sense to me,” Cindy Sue said.

  “Now, as you know, to me the earmark of a good solution is that it eliminates several problems at same time. With no nut shells, for instance, the shell removal process would be eliminated which would save time, effort, and therefore money. I will have to come up with some suggestions for new uses for nutcrackers though. We don’t want them to be wasted.”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of lots of uses for them.”

  “Plus since the trees won’t have to put all that energy into making nut shells, presumably they’ll concentrate on making more nuts to use up that energy. That should increase the harvest even more. See, one benefit on top of another if you have a good idea.”

  “It’s really exciting to hear you talk about it.”

  “It keeps on building too. Without hard shells on the nuts, you won’t need a hardhat to eat a picnic in a nut grove in fall anymore. That makes the land even more productive. See what I mean? This is a really good solution I’m working on.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Chance events often lead to great ideas. While I was gathering up the animal behavior books to return them I saw a picture in one of a bird trying to sit on an egg that was almost as big as it was. The caption said the bird was an Oystercatcher and that it was responding to a super-stimulus. The text explained that this bird species nests on the beach. The female is very protective of her eggs and if one rolls out of the nest she’ll roll it back in. But presented with an artificial egg much larger than the real thing, even as large as the bird itself, the poor bird brain can’t help herself. She’ll abandon her real eggs to try to sit on the super-egg. She makes a complete fool of herself in the process because she keeps falling off, but she keeps climbing right back on because her instinct to incubate is being triggered so strongly she can’t resist.”

  “She’s a very devoted parent bird.”

  “As I looked at that picture the wheels in my head started turning. I was still thinking about solutions for the squirrel problem. I reasoned that if some animals respond to extra large or extra intense stimuli in a super-strong way, then squirrels might have a weak point like that too. Squirrels eat nuts and they also carry them away to store them. But if they were given extra large nuts they wouldn’t be able to control themselves, they’d have to take those nuts rather than regular ones, right? So there’s a perfect solution just waiting to be used. Spread a quantity of oversized artificial nuts through your groves. Make them oversized so they’ll be super-stimuli and the irresistible objects of choice. But make them of a mixture of some kind of plaster and chemical fertilizer. The plaster would be easy to work with and shape so the super-nuts will be easy to make without special equipment. Then once they’re buried in the ground the plaster will slowly dissolve and as it does it’ll release the fertilizer so you’ll feed your trees without having to do the work yourself.”

  “That’s neat, Ralph. This is so wonderful. You’re so wonderful.”

  “But it’s not done yet. Since the fake nut will dissolve in the ground they won’t be available as animal food in the winter. That will force part of the squirrel population to move elsewhere to find food. That in turn will reduce the amount of damage done to the crop the next year. And since the artificial nuts will be much heavier than the real ones, the squirrels will be so tired after carrying off and burying a few of them that they won’t be able to carry off and bury many real nuts. See what I mean? It’s a really great idea. In fact I’m going to make a business out of making the super-nuts and selling them to nut farmers. Then I’ll be rich and able to take care of you forever if you’ll let me.”

  Cindy Sue snuggled a little closer to him as she said, “There are moments w
hen I suspect that people are right about you being crazy, Ralph. You’re a crazy dreamer. Maybe you are squirrel bait like the man said. But I love you and believe in you and I want you to take care of me forever.”

  He held her tight as they rocked.

  “Maybe that’s what you should call it,” she suggested.

  “What?”

  “Your new invention. Call it Squirrel Bait.”

  “Yeah, maybe I’ll… Maybe we’ll do just that, honey.”