St. Francis lost his head... again

We have the worst luck with St. Francis of Assisi items.

We had a beautiful concrete statue of St. Francis when we lived in California. Somehow, this statue standing over 2 feet tall and weighing about 35 pounds just fell over and broke in half. I'm not pointing any fingers, but there were several teenage hellions in that neighborhood.

Oh, who am I kidding. I blame them.

Fast forward several weeks to moving on base in California. St. Francis is in two pieces because husband hadn't gotten around to repairing him or figuring out how exactly to go about it.

The movers pull up and open the truck to begin unpacking our household goods. The top of St. Francis rolls out and crashes onto the driveway.

Now, he is in 3 pieces having lost his head.

Until the mover carrying the bottom half tripped over one of the landscaping stones lining the front walk.

Four pieces.

So, the St. Francis statue was no more.

This year for husband's birthday his mom bought him a St. Francis wind chime. That was the end of May

This morning the girls were downstairs watching Noggin and I was upstairs on the computer.

I heard something that sounded like glass breaking. As I bolted down the stairs, the girls met me at the bottom.

"Mommy! We heard a loud noise out on the deck."

Whew! At least it wasn't in the house, so I don't have to look for blood on either of the children.

I opened the back door and stepped out onto the deck with both girls close on my heels.

Then we saw the headless body of St. Francis lying on deck.

The head had rolled off the deck onto the grass below.

Reagan took off down the stairs to retrieve the head as McKinley burst into tears.

"Why did his head fall off!? Oh!!! He's broken forever. We'll never get his head back on!" She's playing the part of the drama queen today.

I had no idea why the windchime broke. We have had some strong storms over the past few weeks and it has been fine. Yesterday and today the wind has been very still. I didn't even see a leaf moving while we were gathering all the pieces to try to put Humpty Dum... er, St. Francis back together again.

I was perplexed.

Until I heard another odd noise outside. A scratching sound.

I peeked out to see a squirrel who appears to be on crack. This thing is twitchier and more neurotic than I have ever seen a squirrel. It was basically doing laps around the rail of my deck, along the side of the house and leaping from the potted plants to the hook that held up the windchime.

Rat bastard.