Friday, July 17, 2009

The Bear and The Squirrel Attack

Last summer my mother called to tell me her neighbor had seen a bear on her back porch. This was days before the rabid woodchuck incident, who soon became one of my closest non-rabid friends. Anyway, this bear turned out to be me taking some clippings from her plants (as she had asked me to) before the fall frost killed them. Yes, there was a GIANT bear with SCISSORS on her back porch.

Moving on to yesterday. She called and talked to Emily and said someone had seen a bear in the driveway. What is it with the bears?

So we all had a good laugh. And Emily went upstairs to her room.

"SQUIRREL. SQUIRREL. SQUIRREL." She screamed in a way that only Emily can, that sounds like an Elk bugling at that pitch that makes me want to shove my fists in my ears to make it stop hurting.

I thought she was mocking her grandmother by screaming about a GIANT RABID SQUIRREL in the house. She came running out and met me as I was climbing the stairs.

"It's really a squirrel in my room MOM." Well, okay. I went to look and there he was, sitting on the edge of Gina's desk. He saw us and bounced off two walls and then straight at us, flying so fast that only Haley, who was at the top of the stairs, saw him fly into my room. We chased him in and I shut the door behind us.

"How are we going to catch him?" someone asked. I sent Emily out for 3 hand towels and the broom. But with all of us screaming every time I scared him out from under the bed with the broom, and with all of us jumping around because he was running so fast he was a scary blur of squirrel tail and squirrel claws, I thought he'd probably only be caught once we gave him a heart attack.

I sent Emily to her Grandmother's. She was happy to go share the Squirrel story first. And I left Haley in my room with the towels, broom, and an empty laundry basket. "Sit there like Buddha," I said to her as she sat on my treadmill waiting. "When he thinks we've all left he'll sneak out and then you can grab him."

I went to take a shower. The shrieking and laughter continued to come from my room.

"I caught him!" she finally yelled. The squirrely squirrel had climbed up my floor lamp, sat on my bed, and ricocheted from wall to wall until somehow she captured him.

We let him go outside. It was a beautiful moment. Here's the AMAZING video of his return to the WILD.

1 comment:

Haley said...

hahahahahaha you couldnt even see it go XD