One of our squirrels pauses atop the Great Cedar Fence Freeway — Claremont, California © 2024 Craig Dahlberg
Two screens in our living room provide us delightful entertainment. The screen named Samsung lets us peek into jarring world news, a Jeopardy battle of brains and memory, and monochromatic Godzilla reruns.
The other screen, a 72-inch-long window, provides a panoramic view across the top of our cedar fence. Our neighbor’s lemon, orange and grapefruit trees provide the backdrop for the furry actors who scutter along the top rail. Squirrels are always nervous: Run. Brake. Freeze. Quick, flick tail. Think. Think. Scratch parasites. Whoops. No time. Twitch. Ah, at that last twitch, squirrel number two enters from stage right; he is recognizable by his unkempt, thinning tail hair. Viewing from our living room, we erupt into cheers as the two-squirrel drama unfolds on the Great Cedar Fence Freeway. Will they fight? Will their hearts seize from fear over the snarls of the neighbor’s frenzied Belgian Malinois? Through the window, can they watch Godzilla playing on Samsung, or do they merely perceive their own reflections? Can our furry dramatists perceive us, gaping at them through the window? And I wonder…do they like us?
Last week’s squirrel encounter was far different. By counting the imagined rings around my belly as you would count the rings of a tree trunk, you would say I should have “aged out” of the population who tows a fiberglass trailer into the semi-wilderness. But we still enjoy camping, the fresher air, the reduced population density, even our aging, flimsy mattresses. They all speak of mutinous freedom.
Halfway through our camping stay, I peered into the recess of our on-board toilet to survey the contents—a management technique of critical importance to avoid dreadful toilet overflows during the black of night. So courageously, I drained a generous serving into our portable black water tank, then hoisted it ever so gently into our 4Runner. Without incident, I emptied the tank and returned to our site. While gingerly unloading the emptied tank from the car, a young voice demanded my attention.
“Hey, mister! Did you know you got a dead squirrel hangin’ off yer front axle?” Indeed, I did not. Eleven-year-old Weston, with a gene pool shared by Huck Finn and a minor league bat boy, introduced himself. Camping with his grandfather, he had spied the furry lump of a ground squirrel’s body waving like a furry flag. I crawling under to inspect the slain vermin, its body unmoving yet curiously unbloodied. It resembled a bat, upside-down, asleep in the wrong place. Not wanting to touch the nasty, disease-ridden carcass, I searched for a stick to poke it down.
Before I could don protective gloves, suitable eye protection and unpack infection-fighting iodine, Weston’s voice proclaimed, “Got it! Here you go!” he proclaimed, crawling out from under my car. “I heard it make a loud thump when you started your car.” Weston presented me with the squirrel carcass and we examined it together. It had been healthy, heavier than I expected, bearing a lovely pelt. Weston and I performed a quick coroner’s inspection and discovered it was a recent mother, adding more pain to the tragedy.
That evening, I approached the campfire that belonged to Weston and his grandfather to thank the boy, a ten-dollar bill in my fist. Weston’s grandfather sat alone, his grey, scraggly hair escaping beneath an antique wide-brimmed hat. He had the beard of an aged Confederate soldier. “My grandpa never did nothin’ fur me,” Grandfather explained to me. With spicy words, he described how he wasn’t going to do the same to his own grandson. “I can take him camping. I can teach him all the things my grandpa never taught me.” He punctuated the sentence with an accomplished spit. “That’s really the best we can do, ain’t it?” I assured him that, yes, that’s a great thing to do.
Just then, Weston exited their camper and approached the fire, myself, and his grandfather holding an empty Budweiser can.
“You did an awesome job helping me today,” I offered Weston. “You handled that like a real man. You came and told me about the squirrel. You didn’t have to do that. And then you crawled under my car to get the squirrel so that I didn’t have to. You really didn’t have to do that either. If I were your grandfather, I’d be proud of you. Here’s a bit of an offering to thank you,” I said, presenting him the ten-spot.
Weston’s eyes showed that he had rarely held that much money at one time. We shook hands. “Your grandfather is wanting to help make a good man out of you. And you know what? I’d say you’re already well on your way. No doubt about it. Oh yeah, you’re very well on your way!”