Monday, April 7, 2008

Crazy Squirrel

My neighborhood has a nice population of squirrels, and this morning one managed to scare the bajeasis out of me. My front door has a few steps going up to it with walls on both sides, and my morning routine usually involves a quick sprint and a jump down these steps as I try to get out to my car as quickly as possible: partly because its  quite cold, and partly because I am usually running borderline late. Its probably the only thing close to exercise I currently get. Anyways, this morning, as I took part in this routine of mine, and made that final leap off the last few steps, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a very quick movement approaching my landing space. Luckily I landed before it got there, but once landed, it was less than a foot away from my foot and headed quickly right at my ankle as if it was planning to climb me like a tree. For a second I pictured it doing just that and stopping at my face to take a few swipes at my eyes with its little hand like claws. Maybe I did something to tick it off, or maybe it was protecting its new babies, or maybe it had rabies, or maybe it was just plain insane. I didn't know, but for that split second, I expected the worst. So I of course immediately upon landing jumped as high as my adrenaline would take me whilst letting out a small yelp of fear. I believe the poor little squirrel however was just as scared as I was, and ran away as fast as I have ever seen one move, climbing up the tree next to me and traveling far far away. I suppose he was just on his morning routine as well, and was completely unexpectant of a flying human to be landing on his route to his tree. It just so happened that on this fateful day our two routines collided in climactic fashion.  End of story

2 comments:

thefamousnic said...

I HATE SQUIRRELS. I only read the first couple of sentences of this blog because I didn't want to get myself in a frenzy.

jm said...

great story.
i wonder if thats how the squirrel in my picture ended up in the tree. there are a lot of people in and out of the house in the mornings, perhaps there was an unfortunate crossing of paths. the squirrel does look petrified.