The creek below the wooden bridge where I am standing still
is gurgling cheerfully, and I am taken quite off guard
to feel a falling object tap my head. It's not a pill.
I look and see a tiny acorn cap just hit me hard.
I hear a rustle in the trees, but nothing's there, I see.
Another rustle—tip of just a furry tail, must be
about an inch across, and then a scolding, "Chip, chip!" sound.
Perhaps a bird? A chipmunk? Nope. It is a squirrel I found.
The squirrel scolds longer—I look up, and then I spy another,
who races straight along the bridge's railing, slim and quick,
and runs as loose as a small goose. I guess it is a brother.
These squirrels should not escape scot-free! They look so smug and slick.
I toss a loose pistachio shell toward the racing rogue.
Tap, tap! And two more acorns—cap and all—fall on my head.
It seems that squirrels have started an attack—it's what's in vogue.
But this means war! Although I'm sure that no one will fall dead.
I am outnumbered—two smart squirrels against a human girl.
The squirrels are likely to take charge, flick nuts at all who flee.
I only have pistachio shells to lob at either squirrel.
And then the thought—I'd better not stand under squirrel in tree,
or I may feel another 'prize,' if squirrels aim just like birds.
I take a new position, but the squirrels ceased fire, it seems.
The battle now has ended, but there simply are no words
to use to tell my furred opponents that I'll haunt their dreams!
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Author Notes
Thanks to dodgement at fanart.com for such an appealing photo of a squirrel. Written as close as I can get to iambic heptameter. I would even call it 'loose iambic heptameter.' For the sake of meter, the word 'squirrel' has one syllable in this poem, like the word 'curl' or 'girl' or 'pearl.' In my part of the country in the U.S.A., we are more likely to say squirrel as one syllable rather than two. Based on a true event, where I saw a squirrel throw or drop a nut on a picnic table in a park. However, I wasn't sitting at the table.
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