Squirrel Saga Part 2

It’s your early 20s. Life has been relatively smooth sailing and god has yet to send a true trial your way. To test civilizations god sends floods, famines, forest fires,  plagues, locusts and FRIENDS reruns. Testing individuals requires a much more delicate, refined tool. A knife instead of a hammer if you will. For a single person the trial does not come in the form of a flood but instead god sends a squirrel.

You’re in the capital of New York, about 90 minutes north of Kerhonknsen, NY, home of the third largest gnome in the world. You’re on jury duty. Despite your best efforts to declare the guy innocent during selection, the prosecutor (no emphasis on the ‘cute’) against her better judgement chooses you despite your hard not guilty stance before a trial has already begun.

Before the trial begins they let you go out for lunch. Near the governor’s mansion there are food trucks and over a hundred businessmen and women eating outside on the nice, sunny day. You go to the Charcoal Pit and order a burger and fries. To avoid the crowds you find a stone parapet that extends well beyond the stairs that are perfect sitting height.

You sit there, burger and fries on your left minding your own business while through traffic flows on the sidewalk in front of you. Then it happens. God sends his squirrel and the squirrel is now a foot away on your right.

As a quick aside keep in mind this is a city squirrel not to be mistaken with a suburban or rural squirrel. City squirrels better than their country counterparts can sense fear. In a city squirrel situation don’t back down they’ll sense your weakness and take you for everything you’ve got. They won’t just bury acorns they’ll bury any hope you had at a bright future.

Squirrel on one side, burger and fries on the other. You offer the squirrel a peace offering of one fry. It accepts the offering with its little claw hands.

Everything is going amicably until the squirrel stops sitting next to you and jumps behind you to eat the fry outside of the view of sidewalk traffic. Just like World War One this gets escalated through miscommunication between all parties involved.

You’re uncomfortable with the squirrel behind you because that means it (Mr. Pinkerton, that’s the squirrels name for now on) could theoretically sneak around you and steal more of your food like some kind of Ocean’s 11 inspired plot.

In your efforts to return to normalcy you thought it would be a good idea to dangle a fry right above Mr. Pinkerton. As soon as he reaches for it you pull the fry up making Mr. Pinkerton jump. The hope, the crux your whole plan is relying on is to get the squirrel to jump high enough to sit back on the parapet next to you. However if god is looking to test you he’s obviously going to send you the fastest squirrel he can.

You’re too slow. Mr. Pinkerton’s claws sink into your feeble human flesh. In a millisecond the pain signals shoot to your head, you jump to your feet and flail your arm into the air. Mr. Pinkerton is in this for the long haul and doesn’t let go.

Innocent people are walking down the street looking to relax during their lunch break. 

You and Mr. Pinkerton rob these people of their hopes and dreams as you flail your arm with reckless abandon.

From the perspective of the passerby you’re throwing a squirrel at them from point blank range. They all jump into the straight to put distance between them and you, the squirrel thrower.

You finally get Mr. Pinkerton to let go. He runs off looking for some other humans to terrorize. You ignore the surprised cries of “squirrel” from the crowds and focus on your scarred left hand. Little bitty squirrel claw marks mar your left hand.

Back to jury duty sitting in juror’s chair 10 you don’t hear any of the testimony from witnesses, your attention is glued to the claw marks on your hand on the shambles of your future. Are you a were-squirrel now? After what you’ve been through, what you’ve seen how do you even relate to all these unscarred people? How can you be part of a jury to judge a human when you don’t even know if you’re still fully human now.

Trial ends after a couple days. Life goes back to normal. Well, normal for everyone else but not for you. You feel like a coward. Mr. Pinkerton came right at you no hesitation. An Eastern Grey Squirrel weighs around 0.9 – 1.3 pounds. You weigh around 180 pounds. That means you’re at least 150 times bigger than Mr. Pinkerton. That’s the equivalent of you attacking two fully grown male killer whales and their narwhale buddy for a total of 27,000 pounds. If Free Willy came back for revenge with his friends you would stand no chance. And yet Mr. Pinkerton was able to shame you in front of all those people.

Cashiers at stores, people at meetings, toll booth workers and even strangers crossing paths on the sidewalk, you see the pity in their eyes. Life would be so much easier to be anybody but you.

Decades pass and you find yourself lost in investigative journalism as your only true escape. Every story, every idea an acorn you can bury for good like a lil squirrel. Your hands still shake, you don’t know why anymore but your typing is abysmal because of it. So many typos. Over time you realize you develop an editor’s personality to cope. Squirrel King to the lowly journalist squirrel persona. Your two personas spend their days talking to each other in a sort of cosmic balance.

There is no healthy way to truly be rehabilitated from a squirrel attack. Your life has been a cautionary tale for others to learn from. The lessons learned:

-Avoid Jury Duty at all costs

-Don’t step to city squirrels

-True stories with fake endings are much more exciting