X-Man has been glued back together. And sent home. I advocated for a 21 day quarantine, taking one just to make sure he was ebola free. I mean, you can’t be too safe. But they were not interested. Apparently you can actually be too safe.

I was ahead of the game this year. We had people over to carve pumpkins. Because hacking up produce seems like a reasonable thing to do when one feels like celebrating. Why should evergreen trees get all the holiday action?

The pumpkins had been selected during a rainy, muddy trip to the pumpkin patch, of course. The father figure decided to go all father of the year and print of images to carve into the pumpkins. The girls loved it. He went all out, and as someone who can barely get through the triangle eyes, I was more than happy to hand everything off to him. And so had a monster face and a cool looking spider. I was happy to display them and was relived to check them off my to do list. But no good dead goes unpunished.

It was buffet time. We came home from a day of soccer to fine our decor defaced. Complete with gnaw marks. Which eliminated teenagers or other prankster. But not X-Man. I suspected squirrels, I've heard they lose their nuts over pumpkins. So we shrugged and called it a day. 

When I opened up the curtains the next morning I was greeted to this sight. Not only had some rude creature moved on to my non carved decorative pumpkins that were supposed to last until Thanksgiving, he had failed to clean up after himself. Which of course, again did not eliminate a child of mine. The babies kept watch, complete with smeared hand prints all over the window, but we failed to catch the culprit. 

Another day, another soccer practice and we returned to this.

 Not content to eat one decorative pumpkin, he went whole hog on the second one as well. And, his cleaning skill mirrored my children. Again the kids kept watch. It got to the point it looked as if several squirrels from the local high school showed up and had a massive party while the parents were gone.

He was not content just to trash the front porch area. He's chaos spread through the garden.




But our patient waiting eventually paid off and we saw this desperately hungry squirrel feasting away.

For the record, that would be the fourth pumpkin he had invaded. As you can see, he's extremely hungry. And under fed.


The mess is driving me nuts. But the open bar is irresistible to our rodent friend. And keeps the babies entertained for copious amounts of time. So for now, the carnage stands.