The squirrel tried to get back in the day after Kevin from Baystate Wildlife installed a series of one-way doors. A desperate clawing. First one dormer, then another. The creature’s insistence made us wonder if she’d left a nest behind. It is the season, after all.
Lying there in the early gray light of that first morning, my heart broke just a little. We hadn’t calculated on babies.
But it’s been a week now, and no mewling’s been heard, no smaller scratchings, no stench of death. The adult squirrel apparently merely wanted access to what we can only assume is a huge trove of black walnuts in our house.
Black walnuts, forever piled up and stuck between joists, drying out, acting perhaps as an additional layer of insulation. As long as they remain dry, this crisis is over. The squirrel can go back to filling the ice skates in the garage attic and all the ski boots. My ski boots might as well serve as nut holders since I won’t be using them again, which is a different story and not one I feel like telling.
Maybe there are no young because we trapped and killed the squirrel’s mate about a month ago. Should I have kept its fluffy red tail as a trophy? No, of course not. It gave me no satisfaction to see its limp body hanging off the edge of my rain boots — boots it might’ve been intending to fill with nuts.
The desperate, clawing along the gutters seems to have stopped too. I haven’t heard the clicky, scrambling across the roof either. Hunger must be driving our former roommate elsewhere — hunger being a mandate with no room for nostalgia.
“No one likes red squirrels,” Dale told us, Dale being Kevin‘s boss. “Not even grey squirrels like them.” Who knew?
Kevin, smiling, a job well done, told us to give it a few days. I was trying to listen and think about the calendar, but the smoothness of his skin was so lovely and there was a neck tattoo to look at.
How easily I’m distracted! There’s something squirrel-like in that. “Oh, look another story about the partisan hacks on the Supreme Court.” Or, “ Oh, I just remembered there’s a fresh crisp, Pink Lady in the fridge.”
Not all distractions are bad — it’s how much sway we give them. Eating the apple, reading about how a certain ruling will overturn 25% of the J6 convictions, can be tolerated as long as the dog still gets walked, the taxes filed.
Most of the satisfaction from the newly returned silence in our living room, from the sure and final exile of an intruder, comes from knowing that a problem long-tolerated, long-worried over, is finally over. Fixed.
We can’t as a nation can’t have that, apparently — the long-tolerated worrisome thing finally fixed. Instead, we get the failure of recusal at the highest level and also at the highest level, dickering over the meaning of “or otherwise,” which I would’ve thought was clear enough, even say, for an eighth grader studying sentence structure.
So we can’t have a settled, proper righteous result. In fact, it may be that the proper righteous result of imprisoned insurrectionists that served as a deficient stand in for the imposition of consequences on the bigger players, will also be denied us.
I like that the biggest player, the biggest nastiest pest this nation has ever known, falls asleep during his criminal proceedings. It reveals his weakness. It reveals his ill health, his age, his intolerance for matters out of his control.
If only Kevin could install a one-way door that our national monster could crawl out of never to return, how much better I would sleep!
I’m so tired of so many things.
There are lots of nuts in the crawl space. Can’t seem to find the entry point.
They are very crafty and efficient, squirrels are.
And me too. I’m even tired of saying how tired I am of things but it really feels like the truest statement most days.
There is one that comes and looks at me through the kitchen window.
Saying I’m tired sometimes feels like giving up. I am actually baffled…
Bewildered could be a word too. There’s defeat on admitting exhaustion and sometimes there’s relief in it too, the kind of relief that affords a resting place. That’s different from giving up I think but who knows. We are in such need of closure to this ugly, ugly chapter of American life.
Will he EVER go away? I doubt that even the devil will have him.
So tired.
My thought yesterday: I’m glad it’s a Lego.
I do not know how to fight the world.
Thank you for putting it all into words for me. I feel less alone.
Whoa! My comment was depressing.
Here’s a little ditty for National Haiku Day:
Poor man, Sam I am.
Doesn’t like green eggs and ham.
Offer toast and jam.
You’re allowed to leave marks of despair!
Disgusted. I’m not only Tired, Baffled, Bewildered…but I am so disgusted…by those who can’t see it-those who follow blindly…by those who see it, but won’t do anything…or do the same types of things they’ve been doing (like how they report on him or not taking charge of the moments -Democratic Politicians etc.).
It is not funny. Quit joking and laughing over him (says even me, the queen of Gallows Humor during my hard days). Just put a reasonable F*%#ing end to this before it is EVEN MORE TOO LATE. Geez.
It is enough to take care of my (our) own small life.
My parents friend’s once found out the had a bee hive in the attic when the ceiling started dripping honey!! At least one could say that honey is sweet, so there is that positive.
Sigh.
Those who don’t see it and
Those who see it and endorse him anyway.
Which is worse I wonder.
It is so not funny and a completely terrible moment for the press to lose their way.
Good one!! Thanks for the smile 🙂
My comment reads super angry, which I guess I am at times.
Maybe it is just me, but I feel that -for the most part – the press behaves just as they did when he came down that escalator – the Access Hollywood tapes…etc. The ‘lightness’ really bugs me.
I want them to find their way.
Yes. Stop with the polls already. Start direct quoting trump’s absolute inanities. I shouldn’t have to watch jimmy kimmel to hear what that dipshit said about Gettysburg. Make Project 2025 a household word.
From CBS news: 3 of the 7 chosen so far for Trump’s hush $ trial:
“Juror #1 is a man originally from Ireland who now lives in West Harlem and works in sales. He was assigned by the judge to be foreperson. He enjoys the outdoors and gets his news from the New York Times, the Daily Mail, Fox News and MSNBC”
“Originally from Puerto Rico, Juror #4 said he reads The New York Daily News and The New York Times, and cited “my family” as his hobby. An IT consultant, he described Trump as “fascinating and mysterious.””
“The fifth juror is a middle school English teacher who said she is not very interested in politics or the news, which she gets from The New York Times and TikTok. While her friends have strong opinions about Trump, this Harlem resident said she does not. She offered this opinion under questioning from one of Trump’s lawyers: “President Trump speaks his mind. I would rather that in a person than someone who’s in office and you don’t know what they’re doing behind the scenes.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
God help us if this is the jury pool. Even I who have this fond knee jerk reaction to all things Irish, find fault with Juror # 1, the Irish man now living in Harlem who reads both sides but honestly, Fox News and more to the point, the Daily Mail!!!???, a bigoted British form of our National Enquirer who are so anti-Biden, sexist and all round nasty, it makes your head spin.
Puerto Rican Juror # 4 finds Trump “fascinating and mysterious”.REALLY! Trump is an open BASIC text book definition of bully, misogynist, brain dead, evil specter of a human, not even worthy of being called a slime bucket!
Juror # 5: Middle school English teacher who likes the fact that Trump speaks his mind- WHAT? WHAT MIND? To speak one’s mind requires a modicum of intelligence, insight and strength of character- all so woefully lacking in this criminal…
I hang my head in disbelief and am so tired that it has morphed into the need, at strange moments during the day, to dance like a whirling dervish,lest I collapse to the floor in despair…
It’s hard to know how genuine these jurors are being. People might say they watch MSNBC or they watch Fox so as to appear balanced. I don’t know. It is shocking that someone who hasn’t been paying attention or “has no opinion” ought to be considered a better choice than an informed citizen who thinks trump is a danger to the Republic.
I’m sick of all of it .. it feels never ending!! At the same time it feels like the end … 😢
From Luke Zaleski on twitter:
“Trump has basically stolen a decade of normal life from America and replaced it with an antagonistic feeling of occupation.”
Thank you, Dee. Please let me know if I get to be too much! Haha!
Never!
Tired, for sure. My K. won’t let me say (rant) T‘s name in the house.
Legos. Everywhere. In the yard, crevices of the couch, behind books on the bookshelves, etc., forever.
And lastly, a gruesome tale – dad was buddies with a rancher in Eastern Oregon. Our “vacation” every year was a week on his land- camping and shooting the ground squirrels before they could dig holes that his cattle might trip into. I was finally allowed to use the 22 when I was eleven. After my first kill, I cut the tail off with my pocket knife, tied to string on it, and wore it as a necklace until it rotted off.
My life could’ve gone in a different direction…
Gawd. Til it rotted off? What a story.
Not saying his name is a smart idea. There’s been some good new monikers online: Nodfather; Godfarter. I still like Mango Mussolini.