Squirrel Venom

The following is an actual conversation between myself and my aunt Re.



Me: ...I've got so many squirrels and birds, and I've nearly got this one squirrel tamed!

Re: Oh God!! Promise me you won't touch that squirrel!! Don't feed them!

Me: Why?

Re: They're vicious! They attack people all the time... and KILL them!

Me: Squirrels? Squirrels kill people? Are you serious?

Re: Yes!! They hunt. In packs!

Me: In packs?

Re: Yes, in packs. They hide. In the trees. In packs.

Me: I see (desperately trying to make my laugh sound like a cough)

Re: And they prey on the weak. Woman and children mostly.

Me: Uh huh...

Re: And you see it- not very often mind- but you do see it, in the paper, that some pour soul has been killed by a pack of rabid squirrels!

Me: Squirrels don't have rabies. They can have tetnus, but I've had a tetnus shot. I looked into it.

Re: Not rabies! It's the VENOM!

Me: The squirrel venom?

Re: YES!

Me: Like Rattlesnakes, but with squirrels? Are you serious??!

Re: YES! They're very territorial. They'll leap on you when you least expect it. And devour you. Sometimes whole.

Me: WHOLE? Like, they'd eat a whole person?!

Re: In very small bites.

Me: It would be very small bites...

Re: But the venom makes it so you can't move...

Me: Squirrel venom causes paralysis?

Re: Yes. And then they eat you alive, in small bites.

Me: That'd take a while!

Re: Well, there'd be a lot of them. I told you they hunt in packs...in the trees...


And so it goes. Love this woman, and she's very intelligent, but she has a squirrel issue, clearly. Am thinking of going in just before she opens her summer cottage next Spring, and filling it with stuffed squirrels, but I don't want to give her a heart attack.