Varmints

Yesterday afternoon, just before sunset, I went down to the garden to check on things. I'd barely made it to the first row when Nanny hollered from the back door, "Need some help?"

"Nah, I just came to putter around," I told her, but she came out, anyway. She'd already picked most of the ripening tomatoes. They were laying under the cherry tree on a sheet of plywood propped between two sawhorses. When I passed by this make-shift table, I noticed a half-eaten tomato, but didn't say anything. When Nanny passed by it, she said, "OH, NO! The squirrell's already been here!" She said she'd seen him in the garden earlier in the day and had decided to pick the tomatoes before he did. "I guess I just saved him some work," she said. She put the half-eaten tomato in the garbage can and joined me in the garden.

We picked a few squash, some cucumbers, and some hot peppers. As we were examining the butterbean rows, trying to guess when they might be ready to pick, Nanny suddenly pointed behind me and exclaimed, "There's the little rabbit! Keep your eye on him while I get the hammer!"

The hammer? Good heavens.

"You'll never catch that rabbit to hit him with a hammer!" I said to her back as she was running up the row.

"No, but I can FLING it at him," she hollered over her shoulder.

Fling it at him? I looked at the rabbit. He was crouched beneath the tee-peed green bean rows. I had visions of that hammer hurtling through the air, taking out the green bean supports and levelling everything else in its path. But Nanny meant business. "Let me see if I can at least run him out where you can get a clear aim at him."

"I've got the hammer," she said from the end of the row where we'd earlier hammered a tomato stake. "Shoo him up here."

Shoo him up there. Right.

I probably don't even need to tell you that we did not nail the rabbit with the hammer. He zigged and zagged all over the place, and then, when we thought we'd finally run him off for good and had put the weapon away, we saw him dart from beneath the butterbeans and make for the woods. Truth be known, Nanny could not have coldly bludgeoned that little bunny any more than I could have done. She later admitted this. "But I could have scared him really bad," she said.

We finished our work and started back toward the house. I glanced at the tomatoes on the trestle. There was another half-eaten tomato in the pile. Mr. Squirrell had probably had a good laugh from his vantage point on the table, watching us chase the rabbit while he enjoyed another juicy tomato.

I gathered up the remaining tomatoes, brought them to my house, and laid them on my patio table to finish ripening. We have squirrells around our house, too, but I counted on our cat, Lucy, to keep them at bay. So far, so good. If they make it through the night, tomorrow I will slice them and try drying them in the food dehydrator.