Our house is made out of logs, so perhaps this is where the squirrel got confused. He probably thought the house was a tree – a big square tree full of nuts.
Which is sort of harsh. Just because a person leaps about the living room in mismatched pajamas, singing Like a Virgin doesn’t necessarily mean the person is a nut. It might simply mean that the person in question was partying off the pounds with Richard Simmons.
But who knows how a squirrel thinks? All I know is that somehow the squirrel got in and I want him out.
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I was sorting laundry when the squirrel, perhaps excited by the fact I was contemplating throwing a lone white shirt in with the coloured, started chattering at me from his perch on the shelf above the coat hooks. Since I had no idea there was a squirrel in my laundry room, I quickly began to chatter back, only it sounded more like screaming as in the shower scene in Psycho.
After we tired of chattering at each other, I decided it would be best for both of us if the squirrel left. To this end I opened the door to the outside, since the laundry room is also our mud room, and invited the squirrel to leave. The squirrel merely smirked and made itself more comfortable on the shelf.
That’s when I got a brilliant idea.
Taking my willow walking stick down from its hook, I proceeded to poke at the squirrel in an encouraging manner. Unfortunately, instead of scurrying out the open door, the squirrel decided to bridge the gap between us by running up the stick. The stick that I was holding. I could smell the nuts on his breath before the paralysis finally left my arms, allowing me to fling the squirrel and stick in the general direction of the open door.
That’s when things got exciting.
Alerted by the open door and all the chatter, our two dogs decided to drop in for some dog biscuits and squirrel.
As badly as I wanted the squirrel gone, I had no wish for it to end up as dog lunch. On this the squirrel and I finally had a meeting of the minds. The dogs were less easily convinced.
Soon the four of us were whirling around the mud room like two pairs of mismatched shoes in the spin cycle. When the fur finally settled, I found myself on the wrong side of the door with the dogs, while the squirrel let out a victory chatter from deep inside the house.
Dejected, I sat down on the front steps and hoped that either the squirrel would find its way out the same mysterious way it had come in, or that it at least knew enough to add fabric softener to the rinse cycle.
Shannon McKinnon is a farmer, columnist and freelance writer from Dawson Creek, B.C.
