I can tell you when the squirrels wake up in the morning.  

Well, the ones around here anyway.  They wake up after the big, yellow, death monster swallows the human kits and leaves to find more humans to eat.  Once the monster vacates the vicinity, only then is it safe to venture out to find something to eat for breakfast. The way they go to find breakfast is NOT scampering down the trunk of the tree they called home for the night.  Oh no.  They still have to practice their jumps - you know, since one of them landed like a sack of shit last week and their tutor is putting them through the ringer.

So, before breakfast, the young squirrels are jumping from their tree, onto the house roof.  They are to jump from the roof, back into the home tree - using ALL of the trees surrounding the roof-line.  Now, that’s not too bad.  It’s good training for the young squirrels. However, if you’re the human living inside a METAL roofed house, its not so great.  I heard the first thud of the squirrels landing and Buddy, my vicious monster of a dog, starts to growl.  Now, he’s almost 10 years old and other than peeing when we get out of bed, he’s not a morning dog so I don’t blame him for being grumbly. Then there are subsequent thuds. Buddy starts barking his fool head off (which startles me into spilling some of my coffee - I don’t know why, this has been going on for almost three weeks).  Buddy’s barking, in turn, scares the little squirrels on the roof (if the frantic scratching, thudding and whatever else nonsense they’re doing up there was any indication).  Which makes Buddy bark even more because he thinks the entire planet is imploding on itself and the only thing stopping that is his barking.  Apparently dog barks are have super sonic waves that repel falling objects…

Anyhoo!  Buddy is barking at the back door, so, like an idiot, I open the blinds so he can see there was nothing out there hellbent on destroying him; only to have a kamikaze squirrel miss his jump from the roof to the tree next to the deck by mere millimeters and fall right in front of the window.  Buddy, seeing the damn fool squirrel land on the porch, barks with excitement (he loves chasing squirrels - they are his friends) and runs smack dab into the glass, which prompts the squirrel to understand its in danger and scurried up the tree as if Satan had a hold of his tail.  I opened the door, just to get a moment peace by letting the fool dog out when ANOTHER squirrel takes a ginormous leap of faith and launches itself from the rooftop above the door, over my head and into the tree the first squirrel missed.

Well, that gave me my heart attack for the day.

Words must have been said between the two little squirrels because they got into a tussle, one big mass of fur and tails rolling around in the crook of the branch.  Buddy, needing to get his two cents in, barks firmly as if to say, “ENOUGH!”  Not lying,  both squirrels stopped their foolishness, both looked down at the dog - who thought they wanted to be friends with him so Buddy barks his excited, happy bark and he starts jumping at the tree.  Only then did the youngsters see the danger they were in and both scurried up further then jumped back onto the roof, scampering back in the direction they had come from.  I get Buddy back into the house and sighed with relief as I took a relaxing sip of my coffee and went back to reading.

I should have known better.  It’s not like this hasn’t been a daily occurrence for almost a month.  

Just as I got used to the silence, Buddy barked, startling me and causing me to splutter my coffee (coffee coming out of the nose is not pleasant, in case you were wondering) and the thud happened. Again.

Y’all, this has been going on for two and a half hours, every morning for 21 days.  I’ll tell ya what, the military drill instructors got NUTTIN’ on a squirrel’s drill instructor.