I make snap judgments when I run into things not supported by what I think I know. To wit, last week Ann and I were sitting on the patio as is our evening custom when she suddenly uttered an expletive and pointed to a chair cushion.
Such vocal outbursts aren’t unusual for my wife. Ann has a vast vocabulary of expletives that she can machine-gun as situations demand. I’ve always thought she’d be great giving a college course teaching sailors how to cuss.
She said a squirrel had chewed a hole in the cushion. It wasn’t a big deal to me. I told her to go ahead and get a replacement when she found one she liked but added that I doubted a squirrel was the culprit.
I figure I know a lot about squirrels having hunted them unmercifully in my younger years. Unless this one was a distant relative of my past victims out for revenge, I doubted a normal squirrel would have an interest in a cushion.
We returned to our pretzels and wine and I gave no further thought to Ann’s assertion of a rodent attack upon our patio furniture. But lo and behold, the very next day she emailed me an iPad movie recorded through our glass door of “squirrel-zilla” tearing stuffing out of the cushion.
The little rascal had a mouthful of cotton so big he could barely see over it. He jumped down and headed into the neighbor’s yard presumably to deposit the pirated booty into his nest.
Ann said he repeated the process during the day. Since the cushion was already irreparably damaged, she let the little fellow pick cotton to his heart’s content. The only thing missing from her movie production was “That Lucky Old Sun” as theme music.
After that day’s hard work he didn’t return so I guess he finished his harvest. Interestingly, he’s probably carted away much more than needed for a single nest. His tree pad can’t be that big so I wondered what he was using the leftovers for.
My mind launched into the imaginary and blasted off as it often does, leaving reality far behind. I considered he might have other, more ambitious plans. I smiled at the thought this guy could be building a squirrel motel!
If true, maybe he’ll try to pilfer one of our solar powered patio decorations. After all any animal incarnation of Tom Bodett would definitely want to “leave the light on.”
I made a mental note to check for neighborhood trees glowing after dark. I also started inventorying our décor lighting. Uh oh, what if he decided he needed a ceiling fan?
As a serious note, we all know Mother Nature has her act together. I bet she’s told local squirrels a hard winter is coming so this one decided to gut the Gardner’s cushion for an extra cozy nest.
Animals are smart in amazing ways. Before this winter’s forecasts, Skip Waters might consider checking with a New Bern squirrel … or I’ll lend him this one.
Otis Gardner’s column appears here weekly. He can be reached at ogardner@embarqmail.com.