Squirrels beat grandkids to candy in eggs

Icontinue to have troubles with the critters in my yard. They have completely taken over.

A couple of weeks ago, I told you about a giant rabbit that was eating my wife’s bluebells. To keep her happy, I have to stand guard over her flower patch, day and night.

But what happened the week before Easter will forever live in our memories.

My wife decided to hold the annual egg hunt we put on for the grandchildren a few days early. We usually hold it after church services on Easter, but forecasters called for rain on the holiday.

(Of course, the forecasters were wrong, and Sunday turned out to be perfect.)

On the chosen day for the hunt, however, my wife went out in the yard with a big sack of colorful plastic eggs that contained candy and carefully hid them.

One of the eggs contained the grand prize, a $10 bill.

About 10 minutes after the eggs were hidden, we heard the neighbors yelling for us. They wanted to show us a video they had just made with a cellphone.

There on the screen, we saw a squirrel sitting on a rock and cracking open a pink plastic egg that my wife had just hidden. Then they pointed to a limb in the white pine tree practically overhead. On the limb sat another squirrel cracking open a blue plastic egg to get to the contents inside.

My wife looked at her watch and said, “I hope the grandkids get here fast, or there won’t be any eggs for them to find.”

We were especially worried about the grand-prize egg.

The grandchildren did get there in time to find eggs, including the one that held the money.

After the big hunt, we all had pizza and chatted about how the squirrels almost beat us to the punch that day.

As we cleaned up the patio, a blue plastic egg with a hole chewed in it fell out of the pine tree and bonked my wife on the head.

It was a fitting ending to a crazy day.

One final thing: I talked to a man who already has seen a couple of hummingbirds flying about, which moved him to put up his feeder.

He said hummers should be here in good numbers this week. Like most things this spring, they seem to be early.