Squirrel v. Boud, Boud v. Zucchini 6WS

Another chapter in my long running, mostly failing, saga, with my clever little opponents, the squirrels.  When I was doing all the dyeing back there in Art the Beautiful, I mentioned black walnut dye.  And how we have black walnut trees out back, and how I've made totally indelible ink and dye from them, beautiful brown.

The squirrels also love the black walnuts, and can open and eat them.  This puts them ahead of humans, whose best best for cracking black walnuts is as follows: go to a neighbor's driveway, scatter down your black walnuts in their shells, put a big board or door over them, drive back and forth in your car over the board. Result:  opened and pulverized nuts, permanent stain on neighbor's driveway, suggest they refinish it all to match.  Don't try this at home, folks, you'll ruin your own driveway.

The squirrels just casually pick  up black walnuts and bite holes in them.

Alas, they also digest them, as I just found out.  Came home the other day, sank gratefully into the lounge chair on the patio, reading and dozing, long day, and when I went to bed found that I had some brown oily stains on the sitting-down area of my best linen pants.  Oh.  Ran over in my mind where I had sat all day, been in a number of places, but none of them had oilstains.  Next morning I went out and checked the lounge chair and found a little patch of brown oily stuff, gah. Wiped it up, easy to do off plastic, not so much off linen.

And still not knowing what it was, applied every stain lifter known to man or Boud to remove the stain.  The pants are now lovely and clean and the stain is forever.  

That's when I recognized what it was.  Some dear little squirrel after a nice meal of black walnuts, probably eaten on top of my fence, favorite squirrel picnic spot,  had, um, deposited the results on my chair...

Sooooo, unless I can figure out a way to rescue the pants -- no the stains are not in a place I want to decorate with embroidery (!)-- perhaps I have to dye them with black walnut.  

Anyway, short of that it's squirrels 1 Boud 0.  Again.

But on the good side, since the zucchini are coming in like maniacs now we're in late July, I found another way of using some:  a quiche.  This is a straight swipe from Diane's crustless spinach quiche, except I used shredded zucchini instead, and it worked a treat.  

Seen here in the cast iron pan in which I'd sauted the onions and garlic, stirred in the zucchini, then added in the seasoned eggs and grated cheese, all on top of the stove, and then transferred the pan to the hot oven. And sprinkled over some leftover crumbs from a batch of hot biscuits.  After it cooled, I sliced and moved the pie to a pie plate, since I can't be putting the pan in the refrigerator until the pie's finished.

So on the Side of Good, it's Zucchini 0, Boud 1. 

It all comes out even in the end.  Like the joke about the judge who reflects, well, some times I give a poor guy twenty years and really should have made it less, then sometimes I give a guy one year and it should have been more.  But it all averages out!