As the No Trespassing signs and rent-a-fences went up all around me, I dashed to the apple tree and gathered as many apples as I could carry before the fence closed up. It felt a bit like playing Capture the Flag, except if I was caught I might get sent to actual jail.

I had grand visions of turning my house into something like a ball pit, with so many apples piled inside that hundreds would roll out every time I opened the door. In the end I only got thirty-nine apples before the fence was complete (at least, the part of the fence that surrounded my plot). In other words, I had about one apple per day remaining of my sixty-day window.

Well. That was going to have to do, somehow.

As the Good Fences crew marched down the hill with the last section of fence, I pried the squirrel box off the apple tree and ran into my house.

I thought of the squirrels' nut stash under the house. Smart squirrels. At least they were prepared for a siege.