Methinks we need a new garbage can

The old one has worked perfectly fine in the past. On Tuesday nights, we’ll gather trash from all around the house, get it into one big bag, put it in the can and set it out next to the driveway so it gets picked up in the morning.

There’s just one problem: it’s made of plastic. That in itself isn’t a problem, but the hole that’s been gnawed into the lid is. That’s right, gnawed into the lid.

I headed down the driveway this morning to get the trash can and the recyclable bin and bring them back to the house. The recyclables had been collected already, but when I looked at the trash can, it hadn’t been opened yet. It has handles that you pull up, which hold down the lid and help you carry it. The handles were locked into place, but I decided to take a look in case the garbage person had taken the trash, then closed the handles again.

I peeked through the gnawed hole in the lid and the bag was still in there, but I saw something odd: I’d tied the garbage bag shut, but the bag was currently sitting open. Like I said, that was odd. What was more odd was when I opened the lid and reached down to grab the bag, it moved. The instant I made contact with the bag, something shifted inside of it. I pulled my hand back, then reached down again and the same thing happened: made contact and it moved. When I looked through where the bag had opened up, that’s when I saw a big fuzzy tail.

And that’s when a big squirrel head popped up and looked me right in the eyes.

The squirrel tried to leap out of the can away from me, but it was too deep, so it basically made a big arcing skid around the far side of the can. Once it skidded down, I could hear it rustling around, but I had no idea what it was doing—I had already taken a few steps back.

The thought had already crossed my mind: “If I try to touch it with my hand, it will eat my fingers.” Thus, moving my fingers (and other eatable parts of my body) away from the can seemed like a good idea.

Instead of doing something stupid like reaching inside to grab the squirrel, I slowly tilted the garbage can away from me. Think about it like a circus cannon: I would love to shoot the squirrel across the yard and down the block, but looking into the cannon could result in getting my face eaten. I kept lowering the can further and further, wondering what the hell was taking so long, and then the squirrel came shooting out and bolted toward the nearest tree.

After that, it was just a matter of cleaning up. I put all the trash back into the bag that the squirrel had pulled out, tied it shut again, replaced the lid and latched the handles down. (In the back of my mind, I was reeeeeeally hoping that the garbage person hadn’t felt the can moving around, saw the squirrel and just said “Screw it” and left.)

Thankfully, the trash did get picked up later on, but now we’re stuck with the question of how to fix the problem. I should probably clarify one thing first: squirrels are very determined and methodical creatures. This one couldn’t jump from the bottom of the can up to the edge, right? So how did it get to the hole in the lid so it could squeeze itself inside?

Simple: it jumped from a tree. Mind you, we’re not talking about a sapling here. This is an old tree. It’s the kind that tree huggers love because you can’t get your arms all the way around it. And there are no low-hanging branches. The shortest jump it could have made was maybe ten feet in a straight line, but it jumped anyway. If it missed, get up and try again. And again. And again. (We stopped putting bird feeders in our backyard for the exact same reason—if something looks and smells tasty, those little bastards find a way to get inside.)

So now what? Buy a new garbage can? Buy a new lid and hope the handles will still close and hold it down? Use duct tape? Honestly, I like the last one, but I’m not sure how effective it would be. There are some contours on the lid, so it might be hard for duct tape to stick. Moreover, if they can gnaw through plastic, I’m pretty sure they’d be able to gnaw through duct tape eventually. It might leave a nasty glue-like taste in their mouths, but given that they enjoy eating garbage, that’s probably not much of a deterrent.

All I know is we have to figure something out before next Tuesday night. If we try to put the trash bag by the curb without putting it inside a can… we might as well hand-feed it to the squirrels. And hope they don’t eat our hands while we do it.