Yard Work...

Finally, early yesterday evening, I couldn't think of any more excuses not to get out the lawnmower and deal with the dandelion meadow in front of my house. (BEHIND the house is going to take the weed-wacker, some other day).
Getting out the lawnmower means getting it out of the little wooden shed in the back yard.
Now I've known for some time that there is "a squirrel" in my yard. I see him/her racing along the top of the fence to the big spruces in the front yard, and back again with cone in mouth.
I've known for some time that "the squirrel" stashes these cones in the shed.
I suppose from time to time I've surmised that it might even be "two squirrels," not just one...
But candidly, friends, I just hadn't ever thought any more about the ramifications of that.
Until I took the padlock off the shed door...
Lord have mercy, I am the proprietor of a SQUIRREL FACTORY.
There were squirrels sleeping in everything that wasn't already full of spruce cones.
In old hockey helmets.
In old baseball gloves.
In old rubber boots.
In battered toy dump trucks.
In coffee mugs dating from one of the ex's business ventures.
In the fertilizer spreader.
In miscellaneous, much-nibbled cardboard boxes.
And curled up hither and yon in snug places.

And boy, were they mad at me. All of them.