...That's how I would describe the neighborhood I live in these days. It's filled with suicidal squirrels. That or they're out to get us, I've not decided.

It's bad enough that they use our fences as the squirrel superhighway now that we don't have a dog anymore. It's insulting that I can't get any walnuts off my fledgling tree because they pick them all off while they're still green (we managed to get a total of 5 this year). But this year they've gone nuts, pardon the pun.

Yesterday I was out going to the gym and running a couple of errands when I had to stop suddenly because a little black squirrel that was running across the road decided to stop in the middle of my lane. Just stopped. And looked at me before slowly finishing his crossing of the lane. Sauntering, I suppose could say. Considering I had never seen a squirrel do anything but scamper, seeing it go slowly was a little... mind-warping.

So I went to the gym to sweat this off, hit Starbucks and headed for home. Just around the corner from my house there was another little black squirrel. This one ran across the narrow road and then slowed down as my car approached. That made squirrel #2 that was acting strangely. As if it wanted someone to run it down because no one walks slowly on that road with a car coming - you move quickly to the side because people come around those corners like hellhounds are on their bumpers.

But I shrugged it off and headed the last 1/4 mile to home. When I said around the corner, I literally meant it. And there, on the edge of the driveway was a little brown and grey squirrel. Just sitting where the front tire of my Subaru should hit the driveway. I stopped and just sat there looking at it and then inched forward. It moved about an inch in response. Finally it scampered up the driveway exactly where I would park the car, and then changed its mind and went to hide under DH's truck.

I think that's about the moment that I realized that the world has gone mad. Or at least the squirrels have. Or maybe the squirrels are out to get us. One day I was in DH's truck as we were heading for the gym and he slowed down considerably (at the same place that the first squirrel I mentioned had stopped, interestingly enough) because there was a squirrel on the telephone wire above the road. He slowly waited until it had crossed over the truck before driving under it. He said something about one of those is going to fall into the back of the truck one day, and I just let it go.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if the squirrels have wanted posters with our pictures on it. That they want us to help them kill themselves. Or if they've just gone mad - after all, some of them have attacked small children in the area to steal food from them. Or maybe I've gone mad...

...or it's just Halloween coming and creepy stuff just has to happen now.