Villainous Company

Do *not* buy any of the cute little dime-sized pumpkin pies you'll find the neighborhood kids selling for the next few days...

Shoot the little bushy-tailed tree rat. Pellet gun, preferably... ;-)

Hate the little buggers: every year they strip my dwarf apple trees and eat a few bites of each apple then drop them to rot. But got the pumpkins in just in time (after your picture reminded me...)

A few years ago, a neighbor's kid shot 40 of them in his nearest neighbor's yard and left the corpses all around. Kid is a little wild, and the neighbor nearly had a heart attack at the sight of them all.
http://www.cafepress.com/+great_target_practice_ash_grey_tshirt,94310789

If the local Fish and Wildlife folks allow it, a squirrel pole (think of a 4-6' stick with snares along the length) should thin things out pretty quickly (and provide food for the table). Just make sure that it's ok where you live, they get a bit upset about them down here.

William sends.

Heh. Jonathan used to pot them with a .22 pellet rifle. Sometimes he would let Pig, the cat, get a couple for a snack.

I detest them too, but the cats love them!
We get a few dropped on the front porch every now and then. After we praise them, the cats take them away to eat.

I always feel so much more MANLY when I kill something, especially something innocuous that does me no harm - it's a dominance thing, a power thing, an "overcoming my insecurity about being a wuss" thing, a "making myself feel burly and brawny" thing. I get in touch with my inner neanderthal, my inner reptile. And so far, I haven't graduated to killing bigger animals, except for that one time ... ah but therein lies another tale.