It's a well know scientific fact that squirrels scamper. Always. Except when they are sitting up on their haunches eating. Or scurrying along the ground with their nose to it, looking for seeds and such. It's just a well known scientific, documented fact. In any country around the world, in any language, squirrels scamper.
Except the one I saw in the hospital parking lot last evening.
My 84.75-year-old mom had an "episode" of the variety "I don't know, I'm just all of a sudden weak". So, we spent 8 hours in the ER waiting for them to decide they could find nothing wrong, only to put her in the hospital for "observation". So then we had to wait for a room. That's neither here nor there, but just an explanation as to why I was at the hospital parking lot in the evening.
I had the last space on the farthest side of the parking lot, so I got to walk the whole thing. Lucky me! That's when I saw the anomaly. A squirrel. In the parking lot. With a crooked tail no less. Rather than S shaped, it was Z shaped. Or, upside down L shaped rather. It was suspicious looking.
The thing that got me most was the way it was . . . stomping. It looked like a sumo wrestler on 4 legs. Or a Bowery Boy. Or a Lollipop Guild Munchkin. It definitely was NOT scampering as squirrels by all rights ought.
It scared me.
Not as much as cockroaches scare some people I know, and certainly not as much as centipedes and spiders scare some OTHER people I know, but it - shall we say - disconcerted me. Put me off. A squirrel stomping. A punk squirrel, stomping around in a parking lot of all places. Tarmac. Not the seed yielding ground. No trees in reachable sight.
I had an urge to sound the alarm of a possible rabid squirrel in the area, but there was no foam, and I was tired and halfway to my car by then. I was stomping by then.
I think my tail was a little crooked as well.
So I went home and wrote about it instead. Imagine my surprise if I see a headline about a crazed punk squirrel opening up with an M-16 in the hospital last night.
Will my face be red!
1 comment:
i cannot stop laughing about this squirrel.
your squirrel must have things in common with the one legged pigeons who ride the elevated trains in brooklyn and the blind rats scurrying through the underground train tunnels. aberrant. unnatural. worth consideration.
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