Slobodan Shohre has the average house but what’s special about Shohre’s residency is his backyards. While most people in a house won’t do much with their backyard, Shohre really likes his backyard. He really likes it, a lot. He has many decorations including a fountain, gnomes, and many flora which the butteflies and bees sure do like. Shohre also likes birds. In the past he’s been a bird watcher and even uncovered a group rumored to be time-traveling bird watchers from the 1900s but his memory was erased after discovering them so he cannot remember the details. Shohre has a nice birdfeeder he uses and birds come throughout the day to eat from his bird feeder. Blue jays, red robbins, spparows, and more. However, there is one major enemy Shohre faces in his backyard, the dreaded squirrel.

Most people don’t pay much attention to squirrels. “Oh, that’s a squirrel,” most would say. Squirrels are practically omnipresent, and have survived the transformation of a lush, vibrant, natural Earth to an urban metroplex dominated by homo-sapiens. Recently, a zoo added homo sapiens to its exhibit and it might be worth checking out that article for more information on it. Anywho, most people are neutral about squirrels. Some even like squirrels, until they climb trees and start chucking down acrons on your head (and those things hurt, those cheeky little buggers). Backyard connoisseurs such as Shohre, however, believe squirrels are their number one enemy. These creatures have great physical abilites. They are great climbers, can jump far distances, and are resilient. There is a certain gang of squirrels always hanging out in Shohre’s backyard and they ruin everything.

The squirrels do not do much damage to Shohre’s physical properties, the fountains, statues, and gnomes, but they sure do a ton of damage to his plants and what irritates Shohre the most is the squirrel’s disruption of the bird feeders. Shohre’s favourite birds are chilling at the feeder eating some nice food when a squirrel comes along, trounces about the yard, climbs up to the bird feeder one way or another, scares all the birds away, and steals the food. To Shohre, squirrels are just theives, but he cannot take legal action against them unfortunatelly, and of course we at the Hecrenews already have our hands full of legal issues. There are so many you could write a 100-page essay about them, the people involved, and the intricacies and nuances about them. Anywho, Shohre’s community had open backyards, meaning unfenced. Most people would not vibe with this but Shohre’s community knows the boundaries of their yards and as long as everyone can follow the community’s unwritten social contract all is good, and some residents say it’s even better than living with fences. However, Shohre needed to do something revolutionary. For the first time since his community’s inception he was going to build a fence. This was a radical move, as everyone in the community was happy with no fences and if one person builds a fence that could spur others to build a fence and the social order and peace of the community could crumble in an instant.

Shohre knew the consequences. He spents long nights thinking about the aftermath of constructing a fence in his backyard. As his favourite big purple man said, “The hardest choices will require the strongest wills or something like that” Shohre told us. A week had passed since Shohre got the idea, and tomorrow was the day of action. After enough decision-making, he decided he needed to construct a fence, the squirrels were being too much of a problem. The next day a delivery van came with a bunch of fences enough to cover the perimeter of Shohre’s backyard. His neighbors looked in shock as Shohre put up the walls. This was not only a physical way of keeping squirrels out, but a symbolic way of locking himself from the rest of the community, he was now an outcast, he was not one with his community now.

After a week of waiting to see if his results were successful, they were not. The squirrels were easily able to hop over the fence like some Italian plumbers. Shohre regretted his decision and immediately took the fence down, once again uniting with his community and he apologized for his actions. It seems the squirrels won this battle with Shohre, but Shohre says the war is not over. This has been Mister Mjir, popping in and now popping out.