It's A Jungle In Here -- And Now She Hears The Ghost Of Marlin Perkins

WHEN I WAS YOUNG, I loved every living thing. I wept at "Wild Kingdom" when Marlin Perkins cradled cheetah cubs and watched with mounting emotion as lowland gorillas chased him and his assistant with a stick. Vowing to become a veterinarian (unless it involved math), I dedicated myself to protect all creatures great and, well, you know the rest.

This seems sappy today as I crouch, .22 in hand, ready to blow away the next squirrel that tries to move into our attic. I chuckle softly as a fat, gray male cautiously lopes across the lawn toward my foxhole in the rhodies. The sun is high and my cammie makeup starts to drip but I don't break cover. This sucker is mine. Like most former pacifists, I have been pushed.

The first year that we lived in our 90-year-old-pseudo-Victorian farmhouse in Ballard was serene. We decorated, remodeled, cocooned. Our two Scottish Fold cats reigned supreme. We were childless and very, very happy.

The next summer, we had a baby and spent all our time trying to get it to take a nap. The cats, sensing a coup, called a general strike. That autumn, the squirrels moved in.

They jumped from our neighbor's live oak and squeezed into the attic through tiny cracks in the eaves. They opened up some sort of motel and invited all their squirrel relatives and friends. The noise was tremendous. They woke the baby.

The man from the pest-control company said we'd better act immediately. He said the squirrels would leave a scent attracting other squirrels. We said we knew that. And rats, added Mr. Pest Control.

He came over that day armed with humane traps. We don't kill the squirrels, he promised. We'll take them to some nearby wilderness, like Mercer Island, where residents have money to buy nuts. It sounded plausible.

There was a $75 deposit for the trap and $40 for each intruder carted away. My husband and I cheerfully paid the bounty. In retrospect, we should have just opened a charge account.

With spring came the starlings. Fat, brash birds, like winged Oliver Hardys, amazingly got through the same holes the squirrels had. They built nests in the attic and gutters and under the eaves. They left lumpy trails of off-white down the French Blue siding. They squawked and scratched and scrabbled. They woke the baby.

Mr. Pest Control now called us by our first names. He screened all our eaves and gutters and said that ought to hold them. We smiled as we wrote the check.

A mild winter, explained Mr. Pest Control (we refused to call him Gunter) followed by a hot summer. That's your siren song for fleas. A hundred and fifty dollars later, the baby stopped scratching.

It was either late August or early September when the spiders came inside in droves or herds or whatever massive groups of huge, racing spiders are called. I remember it was Gunter's birthday (we baked him a cake with little marzipan squirrels and sugar starlings). I'm sure it was after the hornets in the bathroom and kitchen walls and before a new neighbor moved in with five orange cats. Like a feline gang, they staked out their new territory by spraying our screen door so thoroughly that, on windy days, even Greenpeace won't ring the doorbell.

We have a second baby now and to mark the occasion, the squirrels have returned. Gunter is on our speed dial, but I remember Billy Jack and that guy from "Walking Tall" and my duty is clear. I carefully aim my weapon at the enemy, just a rodent really, and await the pump of blood lust.

"This is it!" I hiss. "The Big One. Goodbye Mr. Chips!"

But something is wrong. "Kill the rodent! Kill! Kill!" I cheer. Still nothing happens. That old "Wild Kingdom" worldview is reawakening. I must again embrace all nature, for each creature that creepeth on the earth and all the birds in the sky have their rightful place on this glorious circle we call life.

Perhaps a little slowly for a true believer, I lower the gun and sit back. In a flash, the squirrel bounds past me and legs it up the drainpipe. I raise my mottled face to the clear sky and see a passing pigeon wheeling meditatively. The ghost of my old mentor, Marlin Perkins, appears beside me, his kindly hand on my stooped shoulder. I weep as I hear him say, "Next time, buy a condo."

Barbara Saari Combs is a freelance writer living in Seattle.