The Last Word On Nothing

The murders began, as they usually do, with the coleus.

I had walked out my front door on that May morning to sit on my porch swing. But I saw immediately that something was wrong, very wrong. Soil was spattered everywhere. A telltale sign of a massacre, as I knew from experience. Dark-chocolate dirt, flecked with white fertilizer crumbs, was strewn all the way down the steps, onto the sidewalk, and into the grass. It looked like someone had spilled a gallon of freeze-dried Rocky Road. I stared numbly. Not again!

My gaze followed the grim trail of evidence to the blue glazed pot on the west side of my porch. I gasped when I saw the slaughter: lime-fringed purple coleus fronds lay on their sides, limp and wilting, their roots upturned and exposed. I ran over. Noooo! You bastards! I screamed internally, cursing the attackers, who of course had long since hidden themselves.

For some individual coleus, it was too late. The damage was too great. But others could still make it. I picked up the wounded plants, righted them in their pot, and scooped dirt around their battered root balls to stabilize them. I patted the dirt until the plants seemed secure. Then I braced myself for what I knew was next. I have 10 more pots on this side of the house.

In triage mode, I gathered my strength and quickly walked the length of my porch. The begonias were easy enough to put back in place, but the two other coleus pots — oh, it was almost too much to bear. The poor plants looked like they had been ravaged by a tornado, or maybe a hailstorm. Pink and green and purple foliage lay in every direction, none of them right. I scrambled to help the plants, forgetting my gloves and diving in with bare hands.

I did what I could for them. I was in a hurry; it was getting hot, and I still had to check the geraniums, the dusty millers, the petunias, the marigolds, and the sunpatiens. I scrambled down the stairs to the big pot, the one we got at Costco just a few days earlier. It was fine. How did they know? I wondered. We have a planter like this every year. How did they know not to bother with this one?

The Eastern gray squirrel, also known (by me) as the Lesser Ozark Tree Rat, remembers.

The tree rat knows to check the permanent pots, the ceramic ones, the ones I leave out after the hard frost does in my annuals. The plastic ones get recycled. That means the yearly replacements are uninvaded by their pencil-lead claws, and therefore un-seeded, so the tree rat knows not to waste its time.

The tree rats use my ceramic pots — or sometimes merely THINK they use them — to bury the seeds they steal from my tomatoes, peppers and bird feeder. They leave the stolen seeds in the dirt for the winter. When spring comes and the seeds are mostly sprouting, the tree rats grow desperate. They start searching for ungerminated leftovers. They dig, looking for plant embryos that didn’t get the sun’s warm message and remain at rest. In their frantic searching, the tree rats tear up my just-potted, fragile infant plants. Coleus carnage is the result.

I have tried to protect my ferny friends. Carefully planted with my daughter’s help, they are extremely special to me. But the murderous tree-dwelling, chattering bastards laugh at every one of my tricks. I sprinkle cayenne pepper on the soil and on the containers’ sides. Bring it on, the tree rats say, we’re all about that spice. In the fall I cover the empty pots with straw. Nice try, the tree rats sing. I sometimes empty the pots completely, and get new soil in the spring. Meh, the tree rats respond, it’s more fun to dig in fresh Miracle-Gro anyway. I sic my dog on them: HahahahahaLOL, the tree rats cackle, your dog cannot catch us! This is accurate, and she hates them almost as much as I do.

That fateful morning, I moved on from the coleus and checked each pot. The geraniums had been shoved to the edges, but were mostly unscathed. I gently scooped them, recentered them, re-watered them, re-cayenned them. The dusty millers in the geranium pots were unperturbed, as dusty millers usually are. The marigolds on the side of the house were an orange disaster. I replanted them — and I would replant them again six more times in the coming weeks, before finally giving up on the smallest marigold, which the squirrels seemed to fixate on, I don’t know, for spite. Finally I came to the petunias and the sunpatiens. The latter is on a plant hanger, which seems to help a bit — at least for potted plants, if not for the bird feeder. And the petunias, well, they can withstand anything. I pressed the soil back into their pots and knew they’d be fine.

I brushed the dirt from my hands, walked up the back stairs, and called the dog. “Get them, Sadie,” I said, and she bolted for the yard. Then I heard commotion in the crabapple tree. A rustling of leaves, and the ep-ep hrheeEEEEHHH of an Ozark tree rat.

“You bastards!” I shouted. “You stay away from my coleus!” I am pretty sure I literally shook my fist.

The border collie ran laps in the yard. The tree rat laughed and laughed.

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Photo: Top, a recovered coleus cluster, in happier times in July; middle, Flickr user likeaduck (CC BY 2.0)