strange visitors

This afternoon I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, by way of the necessary sustenance for the epic foot-slog that is watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest on DVD this evening¹, which is itself a sort of training run for the even more epic slog of watching At World's End in the cinema tomorrow. (In this latest instance, a train of native bearers may be required. Possibly with portable chamber-pots).

My culinary activities were mildly interrupted by an increasingly creepy sense that someone was watching me, and I looked up to see, through the kitchen window, the fixed, slightly manic gaze of the watcher:



The damned evil little rodent sat on the courtyard wall without moving for eight minutes by the kitchen clock, and kept up that horribly I-am-about-to-go-for-your-throat glazed stare throughout. I think it was trying to force me to hand over the pecan nuts by sheer mental coercion. I never did trust squirrels. Lock up your chocolate chip cookies.

¹ When I picked up the DVD, the video store clerk earnestly assured me that it was a very good idea to re-familiarise myself with the second film before watching the third. I'm not sure if this says more about the bizarre nature of our popular culture, in which Hollywood blockbusters have to be taken very seriously, or the labyrinthine complexities of the third film's plot.