This happened a coupla days ago, but I was distracted from blogging by art. But fortunately, it’s Monday! Work avoidance is in full swing! And it’s dark and grim and dripping out anyway, so rather than wandering around poking my plants, I’ll tell the sordid tale of how I got dissed by a squirrel.
I was sitting at the computer, working on something–Digger, probably–when I heard a “scrattlescrattlescrattlescreethudthud!” noise. I looked up, attempting to locate that particular noise in the mental archives, and only getting “dry heaves in a copper mesh water buffalo,” which didn’t seem likely at this latitude.
And indeed, it was a squirrel.
In fact, it was two squirrels. One of them was poised nimbly on the back of a deck chair. The other, seeking the height advantage, was clinging to the screen door at head height.
“HEY!” I said, jumping up from my chair. “Hey, you, that is NOT COOL!” (I have no idea what I hoped to accomplish with this speech, since I think squirrels are immune to social censure, bu y’know.) I stomped up the glass, waiting for it to break and run.
It didn’t. It clung there.
I balled up my fist and thumped the glass in the vicinity of its squirrely nether regions, thinking “That’ll scare it!”
The squirrel splayed its elbows to either side and looked at me, assessed me, and looked away, unimpressed.
“HEY!” I said, miffed by the squirrel’s dismissal. “Hey!” and thumped the glass again, harder.
The squirrel on the chair hopped down and moved nervously off, but the screen-clinger didn’t even waste another glance on me.
Thoroughly enraged by the lack of respect from a small mammal with a brain the size of a walnut, I flung the glass door open, which usually sends them zooming off the porch like fuzzy bottle rockets.
It ignored me.
I charged the squirrel.
This merited another glance from the squirrel, although I braked rather sharply when I realized that I was in danger of actually getting close enough to TOUCH the squirrel, thereby initiating a battle, the outcome of which was uncertain and would almost certainly involve someone getting rabies shots.
I had its attention now, for a few brief seconds. Having a brain significantly bigger than a walnut, I turned the full computing power of that marvelous slimy gray organ to the task at hand. Sure enough, the brain never fails. It kicked up a solution, handed it off to the spine, and the spine, workhorse that it is, took it from there.
Unfortunately, the solution was to charge the squirrel again, waving my arms frantically over my head and yelling “OOOGA BOOGA!” at the top of my lungs. (Thanks, brain. Thanks loads.)
This was too much for the squirrel. Realizing that I was obviously dangerously insane, it bolted. Not daring to turn around, KNOWING that I would see the neighbors staring at me if I did, I sauntered back into the house. Victory is mine.
