Squirrel.

There are too many squirrels. 

 

Our backyard is ringed by big gray oaks and the squirrels jump from limb to limb. They scurry up trunks and frantically dart from tree to tree, gathering acorns and stuffing them in hidey-holes around the mossy bases. Yesterday, I watched as two squirrels collided as they met each other midway up an oak. One going up, one going down, too consumed by their tasks to notice the other. The going-up squirrel was knocked off the tree by going-down squirrel and lay stunned, briefly, on a bed of pokeweed. 

 

I imagined he was looking up at going-down squirrel and thinking, what the hell? He was likely thinking nothing but nuts. I stopped keeping birdseed in the feeders after watching the squirrels eat it all. I bought a BB gun with the intent of shooting squirrels who disturbed the feeders but quickly discovered that I do not have the heart to shoot a squirrel, or the desire to remove a dead squirrel from my yard.  

Sometimes, the tree squirrels are so noisy that I think it must be some larger, more formidable animal lurking in the woods. A possum, maybe, or the family of deer that tiptoe through twice a day. One time, I saw a gray fox lope through the woods, on the hunt for a rabbit. I worry about the fox and the hawk that nests in the oak. I worry that they will see my juicy little dog who looks like a fine snack. I worry that they will try to snatch him only to drop him when they realize that he is too fat to carry far. 

 

Our house sits in the middle of a long road that makes a lazy six mile U. Three miles to the right and it hits the bigger road where there's a Chick-Fil-A and a traffic light and a grocery store. Three miles to the left and it connects a quieter stretch of the same road. If I leave our house and turn left, I can get where I need to go without acknowledging the existence of Chick-Fil-A and traffic lights. Either way, the road is littered with squirrel. 

 

One day, I had to swerve into the other lane to avoid what I could only describe as a squirrel massacre. It was if an entire squirrel family, perhaps on their way to my oaks for a picnic, was hit en masse while crossing the road. I imagine a tiny squirrel police officer standing over the scene, his little police hat held under a chubby arm. They never saw it coming, he says. That's the mercy in it. 

 

By some miracle or just good dumb luck, I've never hit a squirrel. I've come close dozens of times - gripping the wheel and holding my breath and occasionally letting out an ah-ah-ah! Sometimes, I think I've surely hit one. I am so certain that I can imagine the thwap-whump of the squirrel under my tire and up against the wheel well. I search the rearview mirror frantically for a body, but it's never there. Twice, I've stopped to look and make sure that there's not a squirrel stuck under my car. Once, I walked back along the road nearly a quarter of a mile, searching. 

 

What would I have done if I'd actually found a dead or half-dead squirrel? Loaded it in my car and rushed it to the vet at the busy end of the U shaped road? Buried it? Cried over and said prayers that squirrels go to heaven (where, no doubt, there are too many squirrels)? Performed tiny squirrel CPR? Or just stood over it and felt awful and gone home and posted about it on Facebook? Probably that.  

 

I have become so obsessed with the idea - the fear - that I am going to hit a squirrel that I almost want it to happen. I scan the road for movement and hold my breath as they dart across. Occasionally, one will make it halfway and freeze. There is the briefest of moments when our eyes lock and I can see him deciding which way which way and in my own head I am thinking which way which way. Am I turning the steering wheel to avoid him, or to hit him and face my squirrel killer destiny? 

 

It is the waiting for the inevitable that I find so difficult. 

It is the seeing it coming and not knowing when. 

It is the knowing and not knowing. 

It is the remembering that there are too many squirrels, anyway.