For the past few months, some critter has been ripping off the top of my trash can and rooting through the garbage. Invariably, I'd find bread wrappers yards away from the can, though other foods were reasonably popular as well.

I'd assumed I was dealing with raccoons. Not only are these beasts more than strong enough to rip off the top, they're also omnivores. And there was that time a few years back in Durham when I found a frantic juvenile raccoon trapped in the bottom of my trash can. Must be raccoons. Not much to do about that. Even if I went hard core and bungeed the lid on, raccoons could chew through in seconds. So I resigned myself to picking up after the varmints.

Then last week I saw a squirrel running up a tree with a Skippy peanut butter jar in its mouth. Not the little one, either, but one of those 28-ounce puppies. I know this because I found the label in my yard later in the afternoon. The jar? Who knows. Maybe the squirrel ate the jar.

Folks in my neighborhood have known about the omnivorous habits of squirrels for some time. We don't put out our jack-o-lanterns until the night of Halloween. Squirrels go for cut pumpkin like starlets with the munchies. A couple squirrels chewed their way through our jack-o-lanterns despite the fact that there were lit candles inside.

So it's squirrels, then. If raccoons were enough to make me give up, squirrels put me in a state of despair. We've got about ten squirrels per house on our street, and there's just no way to get rid of them. Down at the national zoo, there's a reprint of a newspaper ad from the turn of the 20th century begging residents to save the squirrels. Maybe those were tough time for the little beasts, but it's been a long time since they've faced depravation here around the nation's capital.

But a couple weeks ago, I saw an article in the Washington Post that examined the decided lack of acorns this fall. I thought about this and dismissed it. At first. Then I realized that normally we are covered in acorns for a couple months in the fall. This year, we received about a week's worth of acorn showers. Also, there's a grove of walnut trees on the route we walk to Max's school. Last year we chucked walnuts for a couple months. This year, we found two. Period.

Scientists aren't sure why there's a nut deficit here inside the Beltway (of the edible kind, anyway), but they talk about things like late frosts and the like. It doesn't really matter. The simple truth is that there are a lot of squirrels, and right now they're pretty desperate for food.

I don't know if this has to do with anything, but for a couple weeks at the end of summer, I couldn't walk a block without stepping over a dead squirrel. Some of these were obvious roadkill, but a lot had fallen to their deaths (I assume) on sidewalks. I must've seen three or four dozen dead squirrels the first couple weeks of September. This is before the traditional acorn harvest, so I figure the critters hadn't starved to death.

And, indeed, the squirrels I see today are almost impossibly fat. I've never seen such ponderous creatures. Maybe it's a function of bad diet. Maybe these critters are too conditioned to living among humans. Maybe they've picked up the "fat gene" from the people whose trash they're raiding.

In any case, these squirrels are massive. The one carting the Skippy jar up the tree was about the size of a cat. In fact, I'm quite sure the local felines are keeping as far away from these rodents as possible.

It wasn't just the Skippy incident that has me on a squirrel tear. Tuesday night, a squirrel (or group of squirrels) chewed through the lid of my plastic trash can and emptied the contents. Since we were gone for Thanksgiving, this was almost two weeks of trash. This created an unholy mess. And now I've got to buy a new trash can.

That's not so bad. The one we've got it at least four years old and has resisted every attempt I've made to clean it. Maybe the funk that emanates from the can even in deepest winter is what attracted the chewing hordes. I dunno.

But I'm thinking I'll tape up the lid and wait a couple months before buying a new container. I'd hate to spend the buckage and then see my new, clean can get gutted. I don't think I can wean the critters off my (apparently) tasty trash, but maybe they'll find more appropriate fixins come spring.

I wonder if the squirrels were so aggressive during the last depression? I'll have to ask around. Someone around here should know the answer. When you live inside the Beltway, someone always knows the answer--even when it's wrong.

Jon Worley has eaten squirrel. It does not taste like chicken.