Squirrels, slugs and surreal Barbie

We went to some friends for the evening. Nothing unusual in that, they were old neighbours that we remained in close contact with. What we had not foreseen was that they had a garden populated with mad squirrels, slugs, and a suicidal Barbie who decided to drown herself in the paddling pool. 

Every so often throughout the evening a baby squirrel would fall out of the tree in the garden and the mother would come down to rescue it. This happened on several occasions. Clearly squirrels take time to learn lessons in life. The younger members of the household did their best to facilitate the safety of the squirrels, particularly at one point sweeping them up and putting them in a shoebox. During the course of this exercise one baby squirrel fell out of the tree and got stuck on the leg of a strapping 17-year-old would-be martial arts fighter who danced around the garden yelling "it’s got me it’s got me". 

The slugs were out in force and terrorised us in the latter stages of the evening. I did point out that squirrels eat slugs and that therein lies a solution to both our problems. For some reason the suggestion was not well received. 

These are the evenings we remember.