Close Encounters of the Furry Kind

Hello mensche.

You may remember the days I describe below. Listen with your heart. Here is my story for today.

Today, a squirrel visited me, peering into my kitchen window from my porch rail . He was, perhaps, a great-great-great grandchild from a cherished time. I looked at him, sipped my tea, and remembered.

Drift back with me, 40 some years. A time when life kissed your skin every morning. And you never kissed it back. Because, like me, you thought life's morning kiss was only a pillow away. Now we know. Not so.

Remember.

When I was in university, vigorous and vacuous, ( weren't we all) I lived in a series of depressing hovels. One was a house full of students with a biker landlord who had heinous doberman we hated. The house had a closed back porch and the dobie would sleep, growl and drool on that porch, lunging at us (me) when we stumbled, drunkenly, up the back steps at 2 am. We would fall. We really hated that dog.

One day, I was studying in the kitchen, a communal slop house where all 19 students ate by stealing each other's food from a common fridge. The porch was visible outside the kitchen window. On that day I looked up from my books to see the demonic dobie corner a squirrel on the porch. He crowded the squirrel into the corner, closer and closer. There was a clothes pin basket in the deepest part of the corner. The dog came closer. I put down my sandwich and thought, "poor little squirrel". The squirrel jumped into the little basket of clothes pins, his last refuge before death by dobie. The squirrel trembled.

Then he jumped out.! He went for the dobie's lower lip and bit hard. His 4 claws raked the jaw. The dobie screamed ( dogs do that) and ran, bleeding and pissing while the squirrel held on and then dropped at a time of his choosing, watching the dobie slip in his own piss. I have, since that day, retained a respect for these pimped out rodents. They are sewer rats in fur coats. Something like politicians.

A boulevardier