Submitted by Nightmare_Tonic t3_z1cv13 in tifu
I have always thought of myself as rather intelligent; my wife says I am on par with an average chimp or octopus, and I'm proud of that fact. I recently had the opportunity to engage in a battle of wits with a squirrel, which I thought would have been an occasion I'd be able to rise to, given my recent triumph over the dog whom I tricked into thinking the ball had disappeared. Alas...
We have a backyard with a nice garden that my wife designed and built. She's really proud of it and finds a lot of relaxation working in it.
I work from home, and recently, I noticed that we've got a daily visitor: a squirrel who likes to poke around and look for food. I usually see him while making breakfast, so I usually stand by the window and watch him forage. Well about a week ago, I saw him bury an acorn (or some kind of nut) in the fresh soil my wife had just put down. I had this bright idea that I'd go out there and put a handful of mixed nuts in there with the one he buried. I thought this was genius-level trolling. I was so amused at my idea that the next day I even stood by the window, watching him look for the spot where he had buried the nut, and I was mumbling shit to myself like "foolish squirrel" and "you know nothing."
Well anyways the squirrel unburied his nut and he found it had apparently manifested a ton of other nuts, and the look on his face was hilarious. I mean he was visibly shocked, and quickly buried the whole stash again, then ran up a tree and sat there watching / guarding it from other squirrels. At this point I was so pleased with myself, I spent the whole day cracking up at the thought of this squirrel, and then at like 2AM I was struck with an even more genius idea: I went outside and buried even more nuts in his stash, like three times more than I had put there originally.
I couldn't sleep the rest of the night because I was too excited about this squirrel checking in on his stash again. I probably should have realized that work-from-home has truly loosened my grip on reality after two years, because at this point I found myself sitting at the window at 5AM waiting for this damned squirrel to show up, and just giggling and talking to myself like "oh yeah he's gonna trip out."
The squirrel finally showed up and he checked in on his hoard, and the look on his face was indescribable. He was so flabbergasted by what he found that he actually looked over both shoulders and all around the yard, as if to say, "Are you shittin' me? Is anybody else fuckin' seeing this?!" He just sat there inspecting the hoard for like ten or fifteen minutes, frantically trying to figure out how to manage his newfound wealth, and in this moment I realized that the squirrel faced the same philosophical dilemma as most lottery winners when they incur a giant windfall of cash and have zero idea how to properly handle it. His anxieties became mine, and I found myself thinking, I would probably not fare any better were I to win millions of dollars.
Eventually the squirrel divided the stash into a few smaller piles and buried them all within a few inches of each other. I don't know why he did this, but maybe it has something to do with the investor warning about many eggs in one basket. He was so affixed to his hoard now that he had a hard time leaving it, but when he finally did, I spent the rest of the day thinking of how to ratchet up the drama that was unfolding between us. This preoccupation gave way to a sort of Lovecraftian madness, where all day long I experienced ghoulish, intrusive thoughts about the funniest shit I could do to this squirrel's stash. Eventually I concluded that I needed to end the game and level the economic playing field among the squirrel population in the most communist way I could, lest this little bastard use his resource advantage to create some evil rodent monopoly or attempt to purchase a squirrel social media platform and torpedo it with cocaine-fueled incompetence to the benefit of totalitarian dictator squirrels overseas.
So I went outside that night and reclaimed all of the nuts I'd given him, but I left him the one single nut he had initially buried. And when he came back the next day, he absolutely lost his shit, and was running all over the wooden fence and up and down the trees, searching for the culprit who had ripped him off. The amount of twitching and rage-chirping he did was enough to disturb the nearby birds. I felt like a god then, lording over the fate of puny mortal squirrels who ventured into my yard, and I couldn't help but realize that if this squirrel had taken at least some of the nuts with him to another location, he'd have profited a great deal. The foolish creature learned the hard way that the "HODL" mentality does not always yield insane ROI; sometimes you ride the wave to zero and end up with an empty wallet and your fuzzy little squirrel dick in your hand. I, like the market, can be a capricious mistress.
When I went to bed that night I eagerly told my wife about my cruel shenanigans, and she laughed pretty hard at the story. However, the next morning when we woke up, the squirrel had absolutely devastated the garden, having dug scores of holes and pulling up little flowers and plants searching for his lost treasure. My wife is super pissed at me and this weekend I have to go fix the garden. I am not allowed to buy mixed nuts or interact with squirrels anymore.
TL;DR: Played a trick on a squirrel that backfired hard. Wife is super pissed at me and the squirrel has PTSD and an insatiable lust for destructive treasure hunting because of my foolish whimsy
Edit: I have returned the nuts to the squirrel. He will be happy tomorrow.
Edit 2: For God's sake I did not torture an animal you fucking LiveJournal poets. Lighten up
Edit 3: I read this to my wife and she said sternly, 'IT WASN'T FUNNY WHEN IT HAPPENED. I WASN'T LAUGHING. GOD DAMN SQUIRRELS FUCKING UP MY YARD. THEY HAVE NO SHAME, THE CUNTS'