So that’s when I sprayed all the squirrels with a can of mace.Kidding!

What really happened is that I took off my shoe, and all the squirrels instantly keeled over. Then, shamelessly taking advantage of the squirrels’ temporary lack of consciousness, Cat and I tied all the squirrels’ tails together. Oh, what fun ensued as they awakened!

Well. For awhile, anyway. Then it just got gruesome.

Turns out squirrels really value their independence.

No, here’s what really happened. I started banging Cat’s shoe on the ground whilst hissing threateningly, “Go away! Bad squirrels! Bad!” This had zero impact on them, however; again, they could not take their eyes off my wife’s feet.

“It’s your toes!” I tried not to scream. “They think they’re peanuts, or something!” I looked at her toes. “I think it’s the red!” A week or so before, Cat found a movie I’d rented so boring she was reduced to painting her toe nails. “They think they’re candy peanuts!”

Mmmmmm…..candy peanuts….. .

“Then give me my shoe!” said Cat.

I did that. Which left me Without Weapon. I wasn’t trying those fur-averting sticks again.

So I stood up. That’s what I’d do in a bar if someone was threatening Cat or me. (Not that I’ve ever been in a bar. Because I haven’t. But I’ve heard they’re great places to stand up if someone is threatening you.)

Of course! Stand up! Why hadn’t I thought of that before?!

Six-foot-two, vs. five-inches. Duhr.

So stand I did.

And (after I stomped my feet and waved my arms around a bit) scatter they did.

And that was the end of it.

Actually, that so wasn’t the end of it—but I’m not sure anyone’s even reading this blorb anymore, so I figure I better move on.

Unbelievably enough, Cat showed her Entire Dysfunction as a human being the moment we were free of the killer attack squirrels.

“We’ve gotta go buy some peanuts!” she said.

“Um. Why?”

“Too feed the squirrels,” she said, as if confused about how I could be so dense.

“I want a divorce. Really. Seriously. That’s it. I’m out.”

“Okay,” she said. “But first we have to feed the squirrels. C’mon! They need food!”

So—despite my best, most strident efforts to turn Cat into someone sane—we went to a nearby market, bought this huge bag of unroasted, unsalted peanuts—and then, unthinkably, returned to the scene of our own personal, mega-harrowing episode of When Animals Attack.

I don’t even want to tell you what happened when the squirrels realized we’d come back to them bearing Primo Victuals. It was like two giant ice statues coming to life and bringing buckets of water to people dying of thirst in the desert.

Really. I don’t want to tell you about what happened when we “fed” the squirrels.

Seriously. I don’t.

I’m really quite sure I don’t.

So the thing is, we were surrounded.

You know how when something suddenly happens that’s so completely new that your brain tries to do with it the only thing it can, which is to try to turn it into whatever it has in its Data Bank of Previous Experiences that’s closest to the thing it’s now trying to comprehend? You know? Like, one time I saw this wildly colored, three-feet high pheasant walking around the sloping cement walls of an aqueduct. And I thought, “Hey, a … a turkey!” Well, it wasn’t a turkey; it’s just that “turkey” is the closest category my brain had to this Las Vegas showgirl of a bird.

My wife’s brain did the same sort of Instant Association when faced with the band of crazed, twitching squirrels everywhere around us, some of whom had been dodging in to, as far as you could tell, bite us.

She had seen lots of squirrels in the past who simply wanted to be fed. So she said—in a tone that revealed that at least part of her brain wasn’t quite on board with the thought—“They want to be fed.”

My voice came out alarmingly shrill. “Yeah! And then they want to turn us into jerky!”

I’m not sure what my brain was doing. Something having to do with the way squirrels store their food for the winter.

“Hey!” said Cat, and I looked over, and saw that she had suddenly backed away from a particularly buff looking squirrel who had closed the last space between itself and her.

“Hey!” I cried. It then dawned on me that I’m six feet two inches tall and weigh 215 pounds—whereas squirrels are … littler. “Get outta here!” I yelled. But Cujo the Squirrel wasn’t having any of it. Hunkered down low to the ground, he didn’t for a moment take his inky black eyes off Cat’s bare foot.

“Hey!” I said, with Maximum Authority. I picked off the ground the only weapon readily available: a piece of branch about the length and half the diameter of my little finger. I threw the twiglet at Alpha Squirrel.

The thing spun right past his head—but he saw it. He thought it was food, and shot over to get it. Meanwhile, I had scooped up a bunch of other mini-sticks (which, for some reason, were all exactly the same size), and was now firing them off at the squirrels.

Every one of my shots missed. I couldn’t believe it. The squirrels were so close I could have touched them—yet I couldn’t hit one of them with a stick. It was like being at one of those Trick Carnival Booths–or like, say, trying to hit a coyote with a tangerine. Unbelievable!

Many of the squirrels also thought my flying sticklets were food, and so frenetically pursued them as such.

Which, of course, didn’t work out for them. Which meant those same squirrels came running right back at us—only this time with  literal and figurative bones to pick.

And this is where my brain went into Useless Mode. Because all I could fixate on was the fact that I kept missing the squirrels with the sticks I was hurling at them. I just couldn’t understand it. They were so close—and packed in around us. It was like being in a boat at sea, dropping a rock off the side of the boat, and missing the water with it. It was impossible. It couldn’t happen.

And yet, every stick I threw flew right over the squirrels.

I just could not understand why I, a former Little League All-Star, just could not get my throws down a little. So, moronically, I just kept trying.

The squirrels in the front row—the ones who were clearly determined to bring home fresh flesh that night—immediately stopped bothering with my fake flying food. But the ones behind them still thought I might be throwing something edible—so they, in their turn, also shot off to find out—and then were also severely disappointed.

And then they came charging back, meaner than ever. And they pushed forth the ones in front—most of whom, like Alpha Squirrel No. 1, were now also fixated on my wife’s apparently delicious looking bare feet.

Meanwhile, I was still playing Miss That Squirrel.

“Okay!” yelled Cat. “Throwing sticks! Not helping!”

I snapped out of it. She was right. Throwing sticks not helping. Alpha Squirrel went for Cat’s foot again. She jerked it in beneath her and moved back.

“[Expletive deleted!]” I yelled. I picked up the shoe of hers lying between us.

“Don’t throw it!” said Cat.

So I pounded it on the ground before us. “Go away!” I said.

Now, wouldn’t you think a grown man pounding a shoe on the ground not seven inches away from a bunch of squirrels would send those squirrels hightailing it away?

That’s sure what I thought. I figured that once I started doing that, it was over.

Wrong.

(We left off with me cutting down on my hate mail by finally getting to the part where the squirrels actually attack us.)

Right. The squirrels barreling down on us barged right past that happy, interspecies  Buffer Zone. That was the first sign that something was terribly wrong. I don’t know how wildlife does it in the rest of the world—I could see where maybe in, say, France, the squirrels can be expected to run right up your pants leg—but I know for sure that American squirrels usually Keep Their Distance.

Or they used to, anyway.

These didn’t, though. These (imported?) squirrels didn’t stop until they were literally within inches of us. And they didn’t really stop so much as they ceased their rapid forward progress. But they kept moving like crazy. Staying low to the ground, with feet spread wide and their heads bent up to look at us, their tails were twitching around so fast they were just … fur-blurs. But the main thing the squirrels were doing was dodging back and forth at us.

They were trying to bite us!

“What the [expletive deleted]?” I said. Cat had just begun doing the panicked Backwards-Moving Crab Walk, when I said “don’t.” Because I could see what she couldn’t, which is that there were at least as many squirrels behind her as there were in front of us. And the onces I saw seemed focused on her hands.

I figured that meant there probably squirrels behind me, too. I was almost too scared to look.

But like not looking was going to work.

So I looked.

And there I saw every squirrel in the continental United States. They had come from under, around, and down from Nightmare on Elm Tree. And were coming still.

I looked back around to our front. The number of squirrels there had easily tripled.

And it’s a funny thing about animals. I knew it was true of people; I even knew it was true of dogs and wolves. I knew it was true of flying monkeys, for that matter.

And now I know it’s true for squirrels.

In large groups of their own kind, they can get insanely brave.

My wife Cat and I were sitting on our magical hill in San Diego’s Balboa Park, reveling in the beauteous wonder that is nature. Off to our left was a spread of dense, gnarly … above-ground tree roots, basically. I won’t even try to describe this botanical oddity. But think gold-hued, ancient, above-ground tree roots (connected to these intertwined, truly weird “trees” that grew low and parallel to the ground). Think the kind of place you’d expect gnomes to live.Or, apparently, killer attack squirrels.

It was from out of this woody labyrinth that six or seven squirrels came suddenly charging. Their heads were lowered. Their tails were stiffened behind them. Their shiny black eyes were fixed squarely on us. And they were running towards us as fast as they could.

“Hey,” said Cat. “Squirrels.”

I was speechless. In a lifetime of squirrel experiences, I’d never seen anything like this. (I grew up in northern California, where squirrels are as common as mosquitoes, robins, and people who think southern Californians are vacuous, wanna-be stars. Now that I live in southern California, I understand how wrong my northern brethren are. Not everyone down here is vacuous.)

Squirrels scamper. They gambol. They frisk. They caper. What they don’t do, as far as I’d ever known, is spontaneously charge in groups. This was new.

Well. Live and learn.

And in this case learn fast, too, because squirrels aren’t the slowest critters in the woods. They can pretty quickly cover pretty serious ground.

“Whoa,” I said, as the ground between us and Fort Root rapidly disappeared.

“Ahhh,” said Cat. “They’re so cute.”

“Are they?” I said, feeling just the slightest twinge of panic at the way the Charge of the Light Brigade wasn’t slowing down at all. “Are we sure they’re cute?”

“Um,” said Cat. The squirrels were gaining momentum. They’d be on us in moments. “There does seem to be an issue.”

You know how squirrels and other park-populating, people-wise critters and birds will come so close to you—and then no closer? How they sort of always obey that instinctive Animal Safety Zone while they check you out—while they basically see if you have any food that you’ll throw them?

You know that zone ?

Yeah. Well, these squirrels bolted right past that.

While my wife and I were walking around Balboa Park, we came into an area that we both instantly recognized as the Reality Version of a fantasy place we dream about all the time.

“Whoa,” said Cat, stopping.

“Whoa,” said I, bumping into her back.

And there it was. Our Hill With The Tree.

Now we’re getting into some pretty personal stuff here, so of course I’m naturally hesitant to say too much. But the gist of it is that Cat and I often talk to ourselves about a place we’ve been imagining together for so long now at this point it’s as real to us as not. This … Magical Dream Place of ours consists of a grass-covered hill in a meadow. On the hill is a single, huge old tree, with branches so thick and low you can actually sit under there in the rain and not get wet. In this spot it almost never rains, though. On our hill (which we call “The Hill”) it’s always a perfectly clear, perfectly warm day. There’s a soft breeze blowing. Everywhere around us brightly colored butterflies flitter amongst the flowers of the wild, soft field.

Ahhhh. Just feel the lovely loveliness of love.

Anyway, it’s a place we’ve dreamed up, and often take joy in imagining ourselves.

And then we actually came upon it! In real life! Our Special Secret Dream Place! Right there in Balboa Park! It was as recognizable as the house we live in.

Frozen in place, Cat whispered, “It’s The Hill.”

“It is,” I said.

Without saying a word, Cat reached out and took my hand. Barely breathing, we walked up a slight slope into the shade of the real life version of our dream tree.

Cat, looking dazed, turned slowly toward me. I looked into her eyes. The whole world seemed to stop. Except for the breeze. Except for the butterflies. Except for songs of the birds, and the gently swaying flowers.

Cat moved toward a place she’d spotted, which looked like a spot Mother Nature, being the perfect host, has had cleared for exactly two people to sit. No flowers. No rocks. No sticks. Just a perfect little patch of soft, smooth grass in the shade of the most perfect tree in the world.

We both stood on that spot for a moment, holding hands and wondering if somehow, somewhere during this walk, we had slipped from this world into the next. That sure was what I was wondering, anyway.

Moving with slow care, as if engaging in some sort of sacred ceremony, we sat down.

Maybe an hour went by. Maybe a minute. All I know is that at some point it began to feel like it was real, like it was actually happening. Like we were really and truly sitting on The Hill.

“This is amazing,” I said.

Cat slowly turned to look at me with her jaw-dropped, wide-eyed, “I actually cannot believe this” expression.

I turned to revel some more in the view of the meadow. I leaned back on my arms, and straightened out my legs on the ground before me.

And that’s when the killer squirrels attacked.

Next time: Do I sound like I’m kidding?

So. Seniors in White. About 50 of them.

Turns out they were lawn bowling.

When we first came upon them, I said, “Hey! Bocce ball!”

“No,” said a player near me with surprisingly good hearing. “Lawn Bowling.”

I stepped nearer to this guy, because he had a nice face and it was a beautiful day and it felt like we were all angels. Especially what with all those guys, on a huge square of perfectly green, perfectly trimmed grass, wearing white. I’d have barely been surprised if they had all pulled out little harps.

“What’s with the white clothes?” I wanted to ask the man. I didn’t, though, because over the years I’ve learned to heed that little voice inside of me that sometimes says, “Don’t say it. It’s rude.” I used to hear that voice, and think, “Really? It doesn’t seem rude. Are you sure? Let’s find out.” And then I would say whatever it is my Inner Miss Manners was telling me not to.

And right after that I would always think, “Oh. Right. They chose that couch,” or “Oh, right. They actually believe that,” or whatever.

“You’re supposed to listen to that voice,” my wife had taught me. “That voice is what stops people from getting killed.” Pretty and wise. What a catch!So instead of “What’s with the white clothes?” I said, “Lawn bowling, huh? So I guess it’s, like, a team sport?”Another guy came and stood next to the first guy. “Sure is,” said the new old guy. “We have three teams out here right now. There’s us here on this side,” he said, indicating the three groups of dapper non-alley cats nearest us, “And there’s the opposing teams on the other side of the field.”

The four of us watched as a woman rolled a ball across the grass to a place where a bunch of other balls were. Her ball knocked one of the other balls.

“So it’s like … well, bowling,” I said. It’s been my experience that stating the obvious never hurts with the ol’ socializing.

“No it’s not,” said the first guy. For a guy with a friendly face, he was starting to seem a tad ornery. “You’re not trying to knock anything down here. You’re trying to get your ball close to one of the other balls over there.”

“Oh,” I said. “So it’s like croquet?”

“It’s nothing like croquet,” he said. Then he explained why lawn bowling is nothing like croquet.

“So it’s like shuffleboard,” I said, pretty sure I’d nailed it this time.

“No, it’s not like shuffleboard,” said Mr. Decievo-Face. He seemed pretty angry at how much shuffleboard isn’t like lawn bowling. I looked at the other guy. He just kind of shrugged.

“Billiards?” I said to the first guy. “Is it like billiards? What with the … balls, and all?”

My wife moved in beside me. “C’mon, honey,” she said sweetly. She took hold of my arm. “We’ve got to get going.”

“No!” said the man. “It’s not like billiards. Do you see any pool cues out here?”

“Ah,” I said, nodding sagaciously. I looked around the field for a minute or two.

“So it’s like hot air ballooning,” I said.

Stupid little voice inside. If only it were faster.

(We left off last time with me … um … being a schizophrenic mind-possessor. It wasn’t pretty. You didn’t miss anything.)Killer attack squirrels! For real!

So here’s the lowdown on the crazed rodent hoedown. My wife Cat and I were walking around San Diego’s Balboa Park. Gorgeous day. Vast expanses of grass looking like the Elysian Fields of heaven—assuming angels play Frisbee. Which they might. But probably don’t. I really wouldn’t know.

Anyway, the whole park is just idyllic. People walking their dogs. People holding hands. People holding hands with their dogs. Dogs wishing their owners would get a life. Packs of wild dogs standing around sniggering at their domesticated counterparts. And everywhere you looked, people bicycling, skateboarding, roller blading, skootering, tricycling, unicycling, go-carting, pedicabbing, wagonning, and rickshawing.

As we were walking my wife stopped, faced me, and took both my hands in hers. Looking up at me lovingly, she said, “We’re road kill if we don’t get off this path. C’mon.”

Showing a familiarity with the park’s grounds that at the time surprised me but that now, upon reflection, makes me suspicious, Cat ducked through some tall hedges, went along a little path, found her way through some underbrush, and finally popped us out into a clearing beside one of the weirder things you can happen across on a nice spring day when all you’re trying to do is keep up with your Daniel Boone of a wife.

We came upon a bunch of elderly people. Moreover, it was a bunch of elderly people who were all wearing, from toes to hats, white clothes. Which meant they were a bunch of organized elderly people. So right away I had mixed emotions. I like elderly people, but tend to shy away organized groups of people. An organized group of people—especially one in which everyone is wearing the same thing—always feels to me like it’s one Guy With A Megaphone away from turning into a rampaging mob.

I have no idea why I think that. Even as a really little kid, I remember watching The Mickey Mouse Club, and thinking, “Oh, sure, now they’re all smiling. Now it’s great. Just look at them all, singing and dancing. What fun! But if that Leader Adult of theirs wills it, or somebody blows a special whistle or something audible only to people with those ears, those kids’ll attack whatever they’re told to like four-foot tall rabid rats. You can just see how forced those smiles are.”

So then I’d switch the channel, and see, like, Flipper. Which definitely wouldn’t help.

Anyway, there they were: Seniors in White. And it was too late to duck back into the bushes. They’d seen us.

(We left off last time with me promising to get serious about getting to the part of this story that actually involves my wife Cat and me getting attacked by killer squirrels.)

About twenty minutes into our walk through San Diego’s Balboa Park on a day so beautiful it was like being transported into heaven without having to actually die first, Cat and I took a seat on a bucolic, grass-covered hill—and that’s when we got attacked by killer squirrels!

I know what you’re thinking: “But, John. “You’re such a liar. There’s no such thing as killer squirrels. Squirrels are extremely cute. Squirrels like people. Squirrels don’t attack people. What is the deal with you and squirrels, anyway? As a child, were you traumatized by a squirrel, or something? You already told that one story about how you saw a squirrel fall out of a tree. It’s not like anybody believed that. And now this? Killer squirrels, John? C’mon, man. Come up with something reasonable. You’re better than that.”

Then again, what do I know? Maybe that’s not what you’re thinking at all. I shouldn’t assume the worst. And I shouldn’t assume that I’m the only person in the world (besides my wife) who’s ever been attacked by killer squirrels, either. Maybe what you’re really thinking is, “Yes! I, too, was once attacked by killer squirrels! But to this day I’ve never told a living soul about that horrible woodland experience, because I feared that no one would believe me. But now that you have come forth with your story, John Shore, you have freed me! I can live again! Thank you, Mr. Shore! Thank you! You have restored my life to me! Is there any way for me not to send you a check or a money order today?”

Now maybe you’re thinking, “Did he just tell people to send him money? Is anyone at Crosswalk actually monitoring this guy? First he tells people that squirrels attacked him, and then that people should send him money? What the …? That’s it. I give up. I’m throwing out my computer. In fact, I’m going to sell everything I own, buy a gun, move into a cabin as far back in the woods as I can possibly get, and just wait there for the end of the world. Clearly, it’s already begun.”

Yikes. That’s a little extreme of you. I certainly do hope you’re not thinking anything like that. If you are, though, please think twice about selling all your stuff and moving into the woods. Selling your stuff hardly ever brings you any decent money. What you should do instead is donate it to someone worthy. Like to me, for instance. Mail your stuff to me! I love ex-other people’s stuff! And you don’t have to worry about any of it going to waste, either. My wife runs some thrift stores for an extremely worthy organization, so what I don’t want of your stuff, I’ll donate to her stores!

Well, think about it, anyway. And no matter what you do, do not move into the woods. Squirrels do attack people, as (I promise) I’ll relate tomorrow. But for now, trust me: Live where squirrels ain’t. If you must Go Survivalist, move into the desert.

Wait, wait—there’s some reason you shouldn’t move into the desert, either.

Oh, right.

Coyotes.

The rest of the pieces of this story, in order, are:

Attack of the Killer Squirrels III

Attack of the Killer Squirrels, the Fourth

Attack of the Killer Squirrels, No. 5

Attack of the Killer Squirrels 6

Attack of the Killer Squirrels, Seven

Attack of the Killer Squirrels, Ocho

Attack of the Killer Squirrels: The End