My rooftop garden

One summer in Boston I planted a garden in boxes on my roof. I was super excited. If the zomb-pocalypse came, I would be ready for it.

Carefully I started all the plants that say, "start indoors" on two tiny greenhouses on my radiator. I bought four window boxes and two square corner boxes. Each box takes a 40 lb bag of dirt to fill, so those were no small pots. I bought the best quality dirt for my little plants with fertilizer already in and everything. (I'm a black thumb but I really love gardening. I get very invested in it and in the survival of my plants.). Unable to rig up any kind of pulley system I lugged the bags of dirt up three flights of stairs.

I planted the plants happily and tended to them as much as I could when I was home. The first batch of seedlings died. Perhaps it was too cold, or the germination predisposed them to something bad. I bought another round, planting them before germinating. Some of the second round sprouted, some didn't. I had figured it out. Birds. Birds had eaten the first seedling and the second seeds that were closest to the surface. Okay, I could handle that. I bought chicken wire and covered the pots with the wire. The next round of seedlings all grew.

When the seedlings started growing through the chicken wire they began to look distinctly nibbled. What on earth was eating my plants? Did we have rats? What animal could get up this high on a building and liked seedlings? A fierce chittering from a nearby tree attracted my attention. Squirrels. Fucking Squirrels. Like America to WW2 I hadn't seen the building aggression but now, the war was ON!

The squirrels and I went through a long and complicated dance of hatred. On my side I had the collected wisdom of my uncle Howie -a true squirrel hater if there ever was one- and the internet. On the squirrels' side there was hunger and growing annoyance. Small bits of mirror and plastic did nothing to frighten them away, cheesecloth over the plants was chewed through, marigolds were ignored, decoy food was simply eaten as an appetizer. No matter what I did these squirrels got through it.

A second purchase of more chicken wire protected plants that I was able to totally enclose in the wire. When I say totally enclose, I mean it. If the wire didn't go down a significant depth into the dirt these little bastards would dig under it. If it met at the top instead of folding over itself they'd climb through it. If the plants grew close to the wire they'd reach their grubby hands in and pull off the nearest succulent greens. Worst of all, these little guys were like ninjas. I could sometimes hear them nearby but I could never see them and I never caught them in the act.

Finally, disgusted, I took my uncle's last piece of advice. I peed on them. Well, not literally on the squirrels, but on my roof near the plant boxes. I was ashamed at stooping to something so mortifying in order to protect my remaining sugar snap peas, bell peppers, tomatoes and one promising mini melon, but a stand against these evildoers needed to be made!

A once avid hiker, I learned to pee standing up long ago. Unfortunately, I've never had much proficiency with it, generally dribbling a little on one foot at the end. When you're on the AT, you don't care about that so much. When you're on your third floor roof in Boston with neighbors it's a different matter. Roughly a year since I'd last been hiking I figured my skills were rusty and didn't trust myself to neither pee onto my plants, pee off the roof, nor fall off the roof while peeing. Neighbors don't like to see you pee, nor do they like to be peed on.

In the end, a solution was rigged up in the early morning when roommates were sleeping. None of them ever knew the of the contents of the under-filled wash bucket that I carried to the roof, feeling both stupid and like a modern day scullery maid. I sprinkled my bucket around the perimeter of the roof and was thrilled to later find that it had worked! For days afterward the ninja bastards left the garden alone. ...until it rained.

Not about to pee on my roof after every rain event I gave up. At this point I wasn't even certain it was squirrels. I hadn't ever seen them, had I? The veggies just disappeared, there weren't tooth marks or thank you notes written in acorns, there was no proof to suggest anything. For all I knew, aliens were reaching through dimensional holes due to their extreme fondness for barely ripe Roma tomatoes. My squirrel hatred was bordering on an obsession and I had to stop. I continued to go up to the roof to tan or enjoy the day, but I left the garden alone.

My one comfort was the mini melon. A tiny watermelon with -I supposed- a rind too hard for tiny teeth to crack, it was left alone to grow in the Massachusetts sun. I kept an eye on it and noted that on my return from my next trip it would surely be ready to harvest. It would be five bites of heaven, the perfect summer treat, the only damned thing I would have gleaned from that stupid, pest-bedeviled square of boxes. We all see this coming, don't we?

Home from my trip I started the next day checking on my melon. One more day, I told myself, tapping her lovingly. One more day.

I waited two days just for good measure and crept up to the roof, so as to surprise my waiting watermelon lover. I pried open the door and stepped into the sun, my kitchen shears at the ready. My spirits drained away as I caught my perfect pink lover in the act of cheating on me. She'd been split right into three pieces, gnaw-marks covering her sumptuous skin. Sitting there, right in the middle of her scattered rinds, his grubby little paws and his nasty little mouth covered in the pink juices of my beloved baby sat the fattest squirrel I had ever seen. Shocked and horrified expressions on both our faces we blinked at each other.

His butt was so big it made a dent in the soil of the window box. His pudge was so profuse that his joints stopped at the knees. He had jowls and chins, rolls upon rolls. His arm wings were fatso squirrel love handles. He was so fat that in comparison to his great bulk his tail didn't even appear bushy anymore.

We gaped at each other for a few seconds more. He turned to make his escape. Trying to take a small piece of watermelon rind with him upset his balance. His tail twitched wildly for a moment before he tumbled backwards off the roof.

Peering over the edge, I saw him on his back, three flights down. He twitched, shuddered, twitched again and then righted himself. He attempted to scamper off over the garbage cans, but could only manage something akin to bounding, pulling the first trashcan over and knocking the lid off the second.

The war was over. My beautiful melon lay crushed in her box, ruby insides glistening in the sun. Mini melon, the last casualty in a long and tragic war. I composted her with a feeling of sadness and longing. The next year I planted an herb and flower garden instead and I never saw the squirrel formerly known as ninja again.