The Squirrel Incident

And now, let me tell you about the Squirrel Incident.

Yesterday, while I was preparing a dinner of tacos for two, and Lauren was having a nap in my room, I dimly heard her yell my name. I ran to the closed bedroom door and opened it to find Lauren standing on my bed and pointing to the window.

"There's a squirrel in your room!" she shouted. Sure enough, a black-furred Grey Squirrel was sitting on a pile of camping gear on the floor. It was probably a juvenile.

I ushered Lauren out of the room and closed the door. I've had a lot of experience with squirrels, after having volunteered for three years at the Wildlife Rescue Association. All I had to do was herd the squirrel back out the open window. This was easier said than done.

I used a stick to scare the squirrel away from each hiding place it squirrelled itself away in. Nothing was working the way I'd planned, as the squirrel was simply too scared to think about how to get out. It went behind my filing cabinet, under the bed, into a bookshelf, and then...

Well, then I lost it.

It was really strange. I couldn't figure out where it could possibly be. I looked everywhere around my room, but no luck. I knew it was still in the room, since I'd last seen it running away from the window and not toward it, but its location in particular was a mystery. I decided to leave it alone.

Meanwhile, Lauren was looking online for advice on how to deal with a squirrel. One page said to just leave the house for a couple of hours, and that it would leave its hiding place and escape back into the wild once it was sure that no one was home. That was the new plan.

We ate our dinner and prepared to go see a movie. I needed to change, though, and I went back into my room for some clothes. When I went to pick up my belt by the bookshelf, though, I heard a barely audible but distinct sound. I rustled a box where my belt had been, and I heard the sound again. Amazingly enough, the squirrel was beneath the bookshelf with only an inch-wide opening, and it was hissing at me when I got too close. I couldn't believe it had squeezed itself in, but it was definitely there. Later on, I realized that the opening at the back of the shelf was larger. Then, though, I just wanted to get the squirrel out right away.

Lauren told me to just drop it and let it find a way out on its own, but instead I poked my stick under the shelf and managed to get it out from under there. Then I simply backed away to the side of the room opposite from the window. Before, I had been too close for the squirrel to do anything but panic. Now, I gave it the space it needed to figure its way out.

Soon enough, it crawled up a blanket I'd set on a table and found its way onto the window-sill. The window was now wide open, but for some reason it didn't immediately leap out the window, but crawled along the ledge inside and behind the curtain for a moment before turning back and finally leaping onto a nearby branch. I suppose it wanted to find an easier way out. Probably, though, it was too scared to think. It was literally pissing itself, as there were a few drops of water where it had been on the window-sill. Squirrels are very clean, disease-free animals, so I wasn't worried about that. A bit of disinfectant spray and some paper towel easily cleared that up.

I've always liked squirrels, just not inside my home. This one was probably a juvenile, explaining its curiosity (juvenile squirrels are notoriously curious). As I previously noted, I've handled squirrels before, while volunteering for the Wildlife Rescue Association and elsewhere. I've fed them and even suckled a few orphaned baby squirrels with a baby bottle of milk formula.

They're wonderful creatures, and they belong in the wild. And that's the key. Too often I've seen people try to take wild animals and make them their pets, as if animals are merely here to entertain us. Rather, we should enjoy seeing them from a distance in their natural habitat, where they belong. Just as humans do, they too need their space.