I'm told, I need to buy pee. Urine. #1. It's descended to this. Scrolling down, I see that even if I could whiz in a cup and get it past my family and outside, it's not the right kind of pee.

Somehow I need to get a coyote, red fox or bobcat to pee right on a tree limb and under the feeder. Sure, i just happened to have a coyote, fox, or bobcat in my closet. All this and my fiancee is allegic to cats. Can these wild animals pee on command? I don't even think I can anymore.

Billy in 'Bama saves me. On a critter-ridder site, he says you can actually buy pee ... in my local Ag store. Thankfully, in Tallahassee we have a Weed & Feed/Ice Cream Parlor Store. It's built to look like a barn. Load up the minivan, my fiancee and I are off to buy coyote urine.

And maybe some ice cream.

Hay bales in the parking lot, plastic flowers in plastic pots, wood floors, a painting of a horse... we're in the country alright. It also smells like dog food, cat food, horse stuff, and Double Chocolate Peppermint Rocky Dough Swirl. And the store is filled with big guys, with big belt buckles. And John Deere hats.

Standing there in Comfort Waist cargo shorts, and a fake Hawaiian shirt with colorful flowers, I don't feel so good. I pass on the taste of Triple Berry Latte Chunk Freeze sample offered from Sam. I need boots in this store.

Walking with my future wife on our eighth circuit of the store, I'm praying, "Please let me find the urine aisle by myself... don't make me ask." Aisle P only has pet food, homemade sausages, and fresh steaks. The freshest, I still hear mooing in the back.

I need to ask. "Ah, sir," I say, to a guy with a Deere hat and NASCAR buckle, "Do you sell coyote urine?" Please dear Lord, let it be right behind this guy. It's not. Pulling on his Agway Feed T-shirt, he bellows across the store, "HEY, BOSS, DO WE SELL COYOTE PISS? THIS GUY HERE NEEDS SOME."

My fiancee, jumping in to save me, says, "We have a squirrel problem, we just need to buy some pee."

"BOSS, THEY HAVE A SQUIRREL PROBLEM. THEY NEED PISS FOR THE SQUIRRELS."

Over at the Ice Cream Parlor, Sam has stopped serving. Looking right at me, I know she's thinking that the guy in the Gap Hawaiian shirt needs to buy pee! From the horse-feed section, the boss finally answers, "WE DON'T SELL PISS. JUST TELL HIM TO SHOOT THEM."

Holding open the door for my fiancee as she walks quickly through the trucks to the minivan, the feed sales associate leans over to me as I'm trying to leave, and in a whisper says to me: "Use a 22."

Leaving the parking lot, I hear, "Don't even think of it." She wasn't talking about ice cream.

On Froogle, you can buy pee. Froogle gods prefer to call it "urine." "Whiz" just pulled up cheese spread. "Piss" got a report sent to Microsoft. Coyote, red fox, bobcats, and something that makes deer horny. Having enough animal issues, I went with coyote pee. In a box. Amazingly, on eBay, you can bid on coyote pee in a bottle, $11 plus shipping. Since I know the mailman, I went the urine-in-a-box route. With small-town mail, better the box than the bottle.

Three-to-five days insured. Coyote urine in the mailbox. Into the kitchen, on the island, open the envelope, take out the box, rip open the top, and OH MY GOD!!! To my fiancee's horror, I've just brought the Bronx Zoo into her kitchen, and it's on her new countertop.

We are downwind of the backside of the world. Coyote smelly. It's the gym lost-and-found room in August, it's a pack of wet dogs, it's getting skunked. I've opened up a box of the powdered smell of the Middle Ages. This is Hall-of-Fame stink. And the directions say I need to squeeze the packets to release the "bouquet." My eyes are watering, my nose is running, and the thing isn't even turned on yet.

I'm beginning to hate birds.

Outside, I don one of my batting glove on the one hand I can afford to lose, I squeeze. And the smell gets worse. I've now set the pee alive. It's the fish-market dumpster, the child-care poopy pail, the monkey house with the windows closed. I need to tie it to the tree branch. With a twist tie. I have the smell of hell, in a baggy.

Mickey, Minne, And Donald, your sinuses are about to be cleaned.

Coyotes are a squirrel's worst nightmare, second only to all-weather tires. One sniff of coyote pee, and they will be off my tree. That's what the package says. And it worked. For 48 hours, no squirrels, or neighbors for that matter. Just birds: a woodpecker, doves, and finally, a cardinal, just like on the bag.

I order a book on birds of Florida, and one for birds of Georgia, in case they get lost. I buy binoculars.

I am a birdwatcher. three months late.

"Honey, they're back." My gut tells me, it's not the neighbors.

In my yard, binoculars on high, I see Mickey, sitting on the coyote pee pouch, eating seed. Minnie and Donald are on the ground, hoarding seed.

They've figured out coyotes don't live in trees. And they win.

So I head back to Google and there it is again, SHOOT THEM. Closing the window to block out the noise of the sign, pizza pan and squirrel proof dome slamming into the squirrel-proof bird feeder as the squirrels climb on board, I click the link that reads shoot them.

Fat squirrels and hungry birds made me do it, I won't be held responsible. I close the door so its just me, my Dell and the semi-automatics. Typing as quiet as I can, I dial up eBay, and type in GUN. I'm in luck, only 107,343 hits come up. I lock the door.

Type in BBs and "Don't actually want to kill the damn thing," and now only 36,011 hits. Next, I type in SQUIRREL. And there before me, 371 hits. Someone has done this before, they've beat me to this. I see dozens and dozens of guns that don't hurt. All of which say, "Don't use this to shoot squirrels." Perfect.

I bid. Next day at 2 a.m, I win, outbidding a guy in Ohio for some sort of spring-loaded, 10-shot, P-338 thing that "looks like the real thing." I won it for 99¢, with only $10.00 shipping and 3-5 days of waiting. My weapon comes USPS, in a padded envelope. It's plastic. It shoots plastic BBs. My bullets are orange. I leave positive feedback anyway.

My future wife does not. She's not happy I've got a gun in the house. Plastic or not, orange BBs or not. "You better not be thinking of shooting those squirrels," she says.
In the weeks of my backyard battle, an unforeseen event happened. My fiancee has named the invaders. The squirrels have names.

No longer rodents, they are now Mickey, Minnie, and Donald. Suddenly, they're family. And I'm about to put them in my plastic sights.

Late that night, I load my plastic BBs into my plastic pistol, yank on the button a few times, pick the 10-BB clip off the floor, and leave it locked and loaded, next to the Krispy Kremes. Breakfast bullets. Next morning, completely dressed, making coffee, I watch as Mickey, Minnie, and Donald bound towards the tree.

I pick up my gun, wipe off the donut glaze, and begin the hunt, after finding my slippers and reading glasses. Out the front door I go. Donald, now aware and alert to the creak of the back door and whatever impending non-danger it brings, must not be alerted this time. Slowly I creep around the front of my house, The Mission: Impossible theme is playing in my head, and I am Tom Cruise.

Yeah, it's early morning, I'm sneaking around the side of my house with a gun in my hand. Chances are, the neighbors don't know it's a 99¢ plus $10.00 shipping, plastic with plastic orange BBs pistol. If they see me, they will only know it "looks like the real thing." I've got to do this before my quintessential small-town volunteer SWAT team gets here.

From behind the purple morning glories, I pounce. Minnie, on the squirrel-proof bird feeder, looks up, seeds in mouth. Donald, the chubby one on the ground with seeds in both paws, sits up. Mickey is doing the 40 to a nearby tree.

With reading glasses on I see Mickey perfectly. I aim the black plastic thing in my hand in his direction.

I fire.

Plastic click. In a blaze of orange, the plastic BB soars out of the plastic barrel. Mickey has stopped chewing. The music stops and is replaced by one of my all-time favorite movie quotes "You'll shoot your eye out!"

No, I have not shot my eye out. Instead, after 10 feet of light speed, the orange plastic BB falls straight to the ground. Mickey, 15 feet from the dangerous projectile, drops his seed. On all fours, Mickey, now joined by Minnie, bounds up to my bullet, and sniffs it. Donald leaves the tree.

Somehow, instead of them running from me, they now think I'm feeding them. To squirrels, orange plastic BBs are seeds.

I'm done with Google. I hit delete in the search field and go to bed. I dream of squirrels, no surprise there. On Sunday morning I sneak downstairs to get coffee and make amends for the cayenne pepper/Estee Lauder experiment. Almost to the coffee pot, one quick glance out the kitchen window. At exactly the same time, two squirrels on the squirrel proof feeder look up together, and look right at me.

Please God, not before the coffee and the sip of OJ to wash down the vitamins. What little control I have hasn't perked yet. But God does not answer my plea, and the two scoundrels stare at me while eating my seeds, the seeds I had bought for birds, not squirrels.

I'm out the back door in a flash that would make DC comics proud. In one coordinated reach I grab the 15 rock pile that I happened to leave on the patio table, just in case, and hurl it at the bird feeder.

Having not thrown a fastball that counts in recent memory, the mechanics were not quite right. The pile of rocks whistled 8 feet above the squirrels, rocketed straight through the red/white culinary perfumed birch tree and crashed, loudly, into my neighbor garage. Loud enough, in fact, that the squirrels stopped eating for a minute, and turned in the direction of the echoing garage.

I have gone out my kitchen door thousands of times, and other than squirrels, there's never been a living creature around. Never.

Until, this morning. On this particular morning, at this exact time, my neighbors are coming home from early church. Early morning praise for them, horror for me. Just 11 feet away from the echoing garage is the whole family. Maybe a dozen or so people, relatives from afar, mom, dad, grandmas.

I look down to remember that I've come to say goodbye dressed only in blue boxer shorts. And white ankle socks.

From the crowd's point of view, they can't see the squirrels, or the squirrel-proof bird feeder. All they saw was a half-naked guy bolt out of his house and attack Pete's garage. I finally understand Don Quixote.

But there were squirrels there!!

Walking back inside to hide, I hear only stunned silence next door. Midway up, my fiancee shouts, "Honey... the squirrels are back."

I head back to Google, and up comes ... soap. I'm thinking, great, now I've got to wash them. I read on. People, who actually use the word varmint in a sentence, say soap works. Slivers of it. From what I'm reading, squirrels think we stink. Especially so when we put on the soap that's supposed to make us NOT stink. Dial will do it for my squirrel problem.

The fiancee is asleep. I make bathroom raids. Unfortunately, we must not stink too much. Every bar of soap is brand new. Not a sliver in sight. Sneaking back into the master bathroom, I see, in all its pink glory, a half-filled bottle of Estee Lauder Beautiful bath lotion.

Lotion ... soap ... same thing. And it even has an easy pour spout. Perfect.

Down the stairs, out the door, to the bird feeder. At dawn, I walk around the tree, using the easy pour spout to make a big, smelly circle of Beautiful. I rub some on the branch; the cayenne pepper helps it stick.

Back on the deck, I wait. In time, bearing coffee and the morning paper, my fiancee joins me. Leaving out some of the key details, I tell her that the squirrels are mine. And here they come. Four today. Bounding toward what must be a circle of stink to them. They bound up to, and right through it. Two up the tree, two running around on the ground. Four very sexy-sexy smelling Estee Lauder squirrels eating my bird seed.

Another Google search, and duh ... put something between them, the tree, and the food. Block the squirrel-through lane. This I get. "Honey, I need your Home Depot card."

An hour later, I'm back with a huge, gray, plastic dome-like thing that conveniently fits between the squirrels and their dinner. And it's guaranteed to keep them hungry.

Since this is serious, I skim the directions. This goes here, that goes there, and the squirrels go flying off. Breaking only one key plastic part, I mount it above the bird feeder. I'm so sure it'll work, I even add a little seed. Come and get it, squirrel boys.

Back on the deck, smelling of peppery perfume, I wait. And for not long. Two squirrels up, one squirrel down. I get the sinking feeling they've seen this before. The squirrels are now triple-teaming me.

Suddenly, the dome tips, left, right, big dip, and then, sliding down the squirrel-proof dome, comes a squirrel. One paw grabs the squirrel-proof feeder cage, swings around, and the squirrel clamps on with all four legs. Hanging upside down, he starts dishing out the seed.

I need a bigger wall. And it's sitting on my neighbor's front yard. I spy a big, plastic, Obama sign. Hey the man is in, he doesn't need the sign like I do. And even better, the neighbors are on vacation.

So in my best, neighborly head-down-scanning-the-lawn-for-dog-poop walk, I walk over, lean on the sign, look, rest, and then calmly walk away with the political sign in my hand. Slick.

In my backyard, I stick a screwdriver through it, and then hang it over the squirrel-proof dome, which hangs over the squirrel-proof bird feeder. But it only covers one side. Back out front, I scan the street for more barricades. Nothing. Inside, looking up Obama Headquarters in the yellow pages, I spot another barricade: it's in the sink. A pizza pan. And the sauce will make it slippery. I bang the screwdriver through it, up it goes. Rube Goldberg vs. the squirrels.

This has to work. Between the rodents and the seed: a squirrel-proof bird feeder, a squirrel-proof dome, a borrowed presidential campaign sign, and a pizza pan with sauce and burnt pepperoni.

And it did. Twice. One slips down the Obama sign (Hope indeed!), one down the cheese-and-pepperoni slide. A squirrel heads back up the trunk, out the limb, paw out, catching the squirrel-proof bird feeder in one paw, the other foot on the squirrel-proof dome, steady, eat.

Four pounds of junk in the tree only to discover I have the Flying Karamazov Brothers of squirrels in my backyard.

While searching eBay for "NWT Squirrel Gun," I'm thinking two things: I don't actually want to harm the squirrels, I just want them to go eat in my neighbor's garden; and my fiancee will never let me buy this "Buy-It-Now New in Box Spring Loaded BB."

Back to Google, with no need yet for PETA to picket my backyard -- although the crowds might help keep the squirrels away. Click on ADVANCED SEARCH, type in: squirrels, problems, bird feeder, minus gun, bullets, kill, animal rights. Up pops "pepper."

Google is now telling me I can get rid of the squirrels with a condiment. All I've got to do is to get the squirrels to sneeze, and they'll leave. I can do that. But it has to be cayenne pepper. Squirrels know pepper? Down the stairs, spin the Lazy Susan, stop at this bottle of pepper that's red. Off with the top, I look in, and being a guy, I sniff.

This is bad. It's not about squirrels sneezing, it's about lighting them up. Since my fiancee has never actually heard me spin the Susan before, she's now in the kitchen, and through my watering eyes and running nose, I put the now empty bottle of fire-pepper down and say to her, "I need to make a Wal-Mart run." Experience tells her that this is not going to be good.

In the spice section, fiancee waiting in the car, I'm doing food-aisle math. I've got 25 pounds of premium seed, and cayenne comes in tiny little cans.

I buy 12.

In the backyard, Jeanette hands me a white plastic Home Depot bucket and then, inexplicably, hurries inside. In goes the seed, in comes the cayenne. Since the cans are small, and I have two hands, I do four cans at a time.

Unlike my kitchen, my deck has a breeze. Jeanette must have sensed this. I'm in a cloud of cayenne ... the sunflower seeds are still mostly black. I need walls, but Jeanette has already locked the door. She really loves me dearly.

In the garage, sneezing, I mix in seven cans, holding one out for an emergency. Seeds and hands are now turning red. Mix, sneeze, mix, sneeze, back out to the feeder.

The sunflower seeds are now the same color as the Cardinal on the bag. Google and chat rooms have told me birds can neither smell nor taste this stuff. Sounds right to me. If I was on a diet of worms, I'm not sure I would want those senses to be highly evolved either.

Up goes the bird feeder with red seed. For good measure, I sprinkle the entire branch leading to the tree with the one leftover emergency can. Birch trees look good in red.

Back on the deck, crouched behind the Char-Broil grill, I wait. Let the sneezing begin. A tap on the window. My fiancee is pointing toward the white and red birch. Peering around the propane tank, I watch three bounding squirrels approach.

Knowing I've beaten the rodents with the business part of a burrito, I look back at my Fiancee, proud hunter I am. She's laughing. Not good. One squirrel is on the branch, two are hanging from the feeder. Not a sneeze to be heard.

To my horror, squirrels like it hot.