The Squirrel

The other day, when I was getting home from work, I heard a ruckus in my Florida room. Now, this is just a mud room, but we like to be obnoxious and call it a Florida room. Actually the person who used to own our house moved to Florida. Maybe we do that in remembrance of them. Anyway, I am off my train of thought. So, there was this ruckus in my Florida room. I heard scurrying around and I heard a can fall to the floor (it is tile) and roll around. I was wondering if some psycho was in my Florida room or some wild creature. It turns out, it was a wild animal. It was a squirrel that was greedy and looking for the bin of birdseed that my husband shares willingly every single day with all the birds and squirrels. I came into the room with my two disabled dogs and I see this crazed squirrel plastered on the screen of the window -- it's little arms splayed out and holding on for dear life, his eyes were wild and a bit crazed, and it was looking about frantically for a way out. (I figured -- dumb squirrel -- why don't you just go out the way you came -- you can remember what tree you have stored your winter supply of nuts in, but you can't remember where you came in the room -- it had to push the screen back in order to get in through the window.) It must have short-term memory loss. Anyway, I scurried across the room (yes, I can scurry with the best of you) and let my dogs into the house. I hurriedly shut the door so that they wouldn't see the squirrel (actually, one of them can't see anything) and try to catch it. That wouldn't have been too cool -- the blind one would just go crazy barking and the one that can see and is hard of hearing would go crazy trying to get to the squirrel. So, I fooled the dogs into not seeing the squirrel (not as easy as it seems), all the time hoping that the crazy thing wouldn't jump on me. Then I quickly propped open the outside door to the Florida room and now, I had to get back across the room (and this isn't a big room) because I couldn't take the chance on leaving the door to the house open because of my dogs finding the squirrel, or, God forbid, the squirrel finding its way into my house. Horrors. My door is hard to open, though, typically, I can manage it -- this time, I had to try a couple of times to get the door open. All the while praying that the squirrel wouldn't jump on me. I have no idea how long it took for the squirrel to get out of that room, because I wouldn't go out there for about an hour just in case it was still confused. I find that I am not as tolerant of wild creatures when they are in my space.