I was raised in a part of America where squirrels knew their place — in the woods. We West Virginians didn’t see those rats with furry tails unless we went looking for them, and they didn’t want to be seen by us, especially come fall when we were toting shotguns.

When I hit the hills every October, I had one goal in mind: Fill my game pouch with the daily limit of six squirrels. The only thing I hated more than squirrels were chipmunks. Their incessant chirping and scampering spooked the squirrels.

Absence from the oaks and hickories didn’t make my heart grow fonder of squirrels. I grew to detest them even more when my career path forced me to go urban. Squirrels own the big city and its suburbs, and they aren’t lovable like Rocky of “Rocky and Bullwinkle” fame.

Squirrels destroyed the corn we planted in our garden one year — even after we bought squirrel feeders just for them. They dug up all of my wife’s daffodil bulbs and replanted them in the neighbor’s yard. They ate through the top and bottom of our plastic garbage cans and to this day still string trash all over our driveway and lawn.

I was thrilled when our two dogs, Shelby and Peanut, successfully plotted to kill the squirrels that dared come into the yard at our old house. Shelby would go to one side of the yard and Peanut to the other. Shelby chased the squirrels to Peanut, who was part rat terrier, and she dispatched them more consistently than any shotgun I ever fired.

A few years ago at Thanksgiving, my wife put the pies on our screened back porch to keep them cool. It wasn’t long before one of the local squirrels got a whiff. My son and I shot him with water pistols all morning and finally thought we had scared him off. But a few hours later, just before the feast, we heard my mother-in-law yell, “Ahhh, there’s a squirrel on the pie!”

I wanted to cut out the part with squirrel footprints and eat the rest of my favorite chocolate pie, but my wife reminded me that squirrels are disgusting, disease-ridden squirrels. My favorite Thanksgiving dessert was ruined, and it now has a new name for the family cookbook — Squirrel Pie.

All of those bad squirrel memories rushed to mind today when I read this New York Times piece celebrating the wonders of the squirrel:

Researchers who study gray squirrels argue that their subject is far more compelling than most people realize, and that behind the squirrel’s success lies a phenomenal elasticity of body, brain and behavior. Squirrels can leap a span 10 times the length of their body, roughly double what the best human long jumper can manage. They can rotate their ankles 180 degrees, and so keep a grip while climbing no matter which way they’re facing. Squirrels can learn by watching others — cross-phyletically, if need be.

The article is full of fascinating information about the squirrel that I never knew. But as I read it, I just kept thinking of how tasty they are — yes, they taste like chicken — and how much I’d love to kill six a day for the rest of my life.

Squirrels have their moments. The little guy in the photo above is the resident mooch at the L’Enfant Plaza train station. He introduced himself my first week of commuting by Virginia Railway Express, letting me hover my iPhone a couple of feet above his head to snap the photo. Even I couldn’t resist that photogenic rodent face.

But at the end of the day, he and all his kin are still rodents and they deserve to die, just like the sewer rats who roam the city streets at night.