I hate squirrels

After concluding our long battle with squirrels last winter, and losing judging by the scratching noises we heard about two months ago coming from the attic, I thought that I was done with them. However, upon seeing one a few weeks ago ambling through the trees, I tossed a large stick in its direction, not taking into account the proximity of our car, and it was only by the good graces of a telephone wire that I didn't dent our hood.

Well, despite my idiocy, which I'm famed for in my own mind, I thought that I'd at least have a break from the little squirrels until winter when they'll set up shop in our attic, open an orphanage, conduct school board meetings, and generally make all sorts of scrabbling noises on a Saturday, the one day of the week I can actually sleep in.

We have sunflowers in our backyard. I don't exactly have a green thumb because I think plants shouldn't be such pansies (pansies aside) and should pretty much grow like weeds whether I water them or not. However, we had fantastic sunflowers putting up yet another round of blossoms against our soon to be expunged fence, and they made me happy in the way that only something you have labored on can. Unfortunately, two days ago, S noticed that the flowers had been broken off. "Perhaps the blossom was just too heavy," she said.

"Dammit S," I replied. "Don't talk nonsense. It was that damn kid Dennis." As it turns out, as I discovered the next day, those damn little black squirrels were climbing the chain link fence, hopping onto the top of my flower in an attempt to eat the seeds, and breaking off the top of the stock. At which point, I went outside, cut off the top of the stalks, laced them with arsenic and tossed them in the alley for the squirrels to eat. Needless to say, it's been a couple of days now, and we're starting to acquire a massive stench from the corpses of rodents rotting in our back alley.

Okay, okay, I didn't really lace the sunflowers with arsenic, but give me one good reason why I shouldn't? Remember in grade school how you built that amazing lego castle, or got all of your My Little Pony's in some kind of perfect order that only you could comprehend and then some little jerk came along and kicked it over. Did you laugh it off? Hell no, if you were smart you got up and punched them in the nose. If not, you started crying. Either way, what you were trying to do was make sure that that kid would cease and desist in the future. What recourse do I have? Also, how much do squirrel slippers sell for?