I'm going to use a slightly more polite term, but maybe you could tell me about freaking Kevin, as you called him.

Yes, effing Kevin is what I also sometimes call him.

So, I think Kevin lives in my backyard.

To be fair, there's not a single Kevin. Kevin is a stand-in

for like one of any 20. Kevin is a collective. Yeah, Kevin is a collective term, a gender-neutral

collective term for the Eastern gray squirrels that live in my backyard. And I am endlessly frustrated

by Kevin because I am a gardener and I like to grow tomatoes.

And Kevin also likes tomatoes, which is a real issue.

And so Kevin will take the tomato and he will take one bite.

Yes.

And then he will go.

The one bite out of the tomato is like a deep cruelty to the gardener.

Yes, it's one bite. And then Kevin recalls that he does not actually like tomatoes.

Right. And he just leaves it right there. And several years running now, the Kevin's in my yard have eaten every single tomato in my garden.

Yeah.

Dozens and dozens of tomatoes.

And it has been an endless source of frustration to me.

It seems like perhaps these interactions with your Kevin's kind of opened up something for you,

a kind of area of inquiry as a journalist that maybe took you much,

much farther than just figuring out how to stop your backyard squirrels

from nibbling on your tomatoes.

What did this open up for you?

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