My neighbourhood is, for some reason, a squirrel graveyard these days. I take my dog for a walk and there are squirrel carcasses in varying stages of decomposition everywhere. It is quite disconcerting. Also disconcerting is the fact that dead squirrels are to my dog what giant bags of potato chips are to me: not part of my regular diet, certainly, but irresistible when within a two-foot radius.
Disturbingly, my current favourite children’s book is Scaredy Squirrel, and when I saw a fresh squirrel corpse today I thought, calmly, that maybe it was just Scaredy playing dead.
All the dead squirrels made me a little nervous to rake the leaves. I kept scanning the yard nervously, but thankfully my yard was corpse-free.
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| Unfortunately, I can’t guarantee that the leaves were free of dog urine, but some things are better left unthought. |
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I read a post by the Bloggess about that episode on Little House on the Prairie where Ma is all alone and has some weird infected gangrenous cut on her leg and then she reads in the Bible something to the effect that if a limb is bothering you then you should cut it off, and so she attempts to do JUST THAT. Perhaps a less literal interpretation would be in order here. But it reminded me of another disturbing Little House episode wherein some random girl gets raped, and is subsquently pregnant, and everyone blames her for her loose morals and her grandfather says ominously “You reap what you sow.” Then Albert wants to marry her to, I don’t know, SAVE her, but in one of those odd Little House happy endings, before they get married she falls off a ladder and dies. Intense! Does anyone else remember that? It doesn’t seem like particularly family friendly programming to me.
And what does that have to do with dead squirrels? Nothing at all.
“…dead squirrels are to my dog what giant bags of potato chips are to me: not part of my regular diet, certainly, but irresistible when within a two-foot radius…” This is really funny. I’m sure it will generate a lot of interesting google hits for your blog.
I’ve never seen a complete episode of Little House on the Prairie, so I’m afraid I can’t help you.
I watched Little house regularly as a kid and must say, I missed both those episodes. THank heavens.
We too are BIG Melanie Watt fans. ALthough a certain four year old gets the books mixed up and always calls him “chesty squirrel.” Which is an unfortunate name for a male squirrel.
I don’t remember that happening in the Little House in the Prairie books. I remember the bees and the giant snowstorm.
Poor Scaredy Squirrel.
LisaDay
I remember both of those episodes. Little House made me cry when I was a kid.
We get them occasionally from the library now for the kids to watch, but I’m pretty careful of what episodes I let them watch. There was a lot of death, cruelty, and wagons crushing people. Do you remember when Laura stole Nellie’s jewellery box, and dreamt that she went to the gallows to be hung for it? That episode still haunts me to this day.
For all of the intensity, Little House’s strength is the father-daughter relationship. I suppose father-son relationship too, after Albert was adopted. The kids played fearlessly, made mistakes, and were loved unconditionally. Pa made them take responsibility, but loved them through it all. Love that about the show.
What awesome photots – and you got the button up! Yay – it worked!!
Welcome to TMC!!!
The funniest thing I have read in a long time: “dead squirrels are to my dog what giant bags of potato chips are to me: not part of my regular diet, certainly, but irresistible when within a two-foot radius.”
Little House on the Prairie was intense! Do you remember the one where Mary was trapped in a fire at the blind school and she used her infant’s head to bash open the window?!! Horrifying!!
I do remember that LHP episode — scared the crap out of me! WTF indeed? My daughter wrote a fan letter to Melanie Watt. I love Scaredy Squirrel — I find him really relatable. Is that sad?
Heather and Mrs. Mayhem – YES. I remember both those episodes. I never had heard of gallows before that. Freaky!
Allison, I also relate to Scaredy Squirrel. I like my days predictable and I use a lot of antibacterial soap.