Squirrel!

In the back yard, we keep white Christmas lights in the trees and in the arbor year-round. I have them wired to a smart plug, so with just a couple of phone taps, we can have the dark yard bathed in a warm light that also highlights our awesome trees.

After our trip, none of the lights worked. No surprise there -- they require some upkeep and replacement during the year.

V and I spent a full day replacing what needed to be replaced, and they were glorious.

For about one day.

After that day, there was a line that had been bitten in half by night rodents. Or maybe squirrels. I see a lot more of those.

After that, more lines were bitten in half day after day. For the last couple of months, turning on the lights lit the arbor, but that's it.

This weekend, I pulled out all of the old lights and replaced them again. This time, I bathed each strand in a liquid repellant that smelled like wintergreen life savers. Once I had them all strung up, I deployed some little packets of repellant.

First, I went to the instructions, which only made me feel stupid:

So I opened the package. It just about knocked me on my ass with the strong smell of peppermint mixed with garlic. The strongest garlic smell you've ever come across. These smells might individually be fine, but they are sooooo bad when mixed together.

I placed the packets on the fence where the squirrels run by and in the crotches of the trees and within a few minutes, the whole yard reeked.

They're still out, and it doesn't smell so bad as I sit outside and type this several days later. But it could just be that I'm nose blind to the smell now.

It's a really bad smell.