Me vs The Squirrels

Beautiful Brookside...it's a wonderful place to live, but this time of year it is full of evil little furry thieves.  Those squirrels may look cute with their fluffy tails and tiny little hands, but they are nothing but common pumpkin-stealing criminals. 

Imagine my window boxes adorned with pumpkins.  Each one with a big pumpkin the middle and a row of cute little mini pumpkins on each side.  So festive!  Then imagine my horror when I came home the next day to find ALL of my mini pumpkins GONE!  Vanished into thin air.  I know who is responsible so when I replace them I make sure to slather them with hot sauce...that is supposed to keep the little vermin away. 

Nope.  Didn't work.  All of the pumpkins disappeared again within two days.

With no more little pumpkins to steal, they got to work on defacing and destroying the big ones.  It only took about a day or two for them to gnaw their way into all of the pumpkins on our property and they have been feasting ever since.  One of the pumpkins is still in my window box and the squirrels have the audacity to just sit there eating away even when we are inside the house looking at them through the window...1 foot away!  They just sit there with their cute little paws wrapped around a pumpkin seed looking back at us like, "What are you looking at?  I'm eating dinner." 

I shouldn't be surprised.  These are the same little buggars who stole every single tomato (they were still green!) off of my tomato bush one night and left them strewn around the yard with one bite out of each of them.  But is it too much to ask for them to just let me have my house decorated for fall?  Why must you destroy every single pumpkin, you little beasts? 

Let's just say that I no longer "break for squirrels."  This is war.