This morning I was sitting at the table our laptop lives on, which is next to a large window that looks out onto our street. We’re fortunate enough to live in an area of town where someone took care at a point in history to plant trees, mostly oaks, as far up and down the avenue as can be seen, and so rather than looking directly into a neighbor’s living room window as I gaze out the glass, I have the lovely branches and leaves of one of our fine arboreal friends.
It can be remarkably soothing to see that patch of nature rising up to greet you every day. Trees like this one are were where I saw my first Cardinal, which if I put aside my deeply bred distaste for the baseball team that absconded with the poor thing’s name and likeness, is perhaps the most beautiful bird you’re likely to see in an urban setting. Sadly, Cardinal sightings are rare, and instead of the lonesome flash of red, you’re far more likely – no, nearly guaranteed – to see one or more squirrels scurrying about the branches.
Now, before those of you dear readers who don’t live in Chicago or some similarly urbanized setting start ruminating on the cuteness inherent in these beasts, allow me to warn you that these are not the squirrels you know. Squirrels, like it or not, are very much like people, in that their behavior is molded and shaped by their environment.
Where I originally come from, the Great Northwest, there are lots of tall evergreen trees where squirrels live and play, with an abundance of naturally occurring food sources that allow them to mind their own business. My backyard growing up was full of these monster firs, and squirrels were abundant, but they never bothered me or my friends, never once approached us for any reason. Get near one, and you’d watch it scurry away, climbing the trunk of the nearest looming canopy. They had no reason to contact people. Humans ignored them, and being happy, full, and content, the squirrels returned the favor.
When I moved to Chicago, I encountered an entirely different type of animal. Where once I was ignored, now I was brazenly approached. Where once the beasties would scramble before my strides, now they blocked my path, demanding tribute in the form of…well, they never said, but I’d imagine their ideal was along the lines of a partially eaten Zagnut bar.
They are, in short, the most aggressive variety of street tough. Before you they stand, staring at you, their eyes cold and empty – killer’s eyes – legs spread wide to block the widest possible area of sidewalk, your every evasive maneuver mirrored. If an All-Star NFL linebacker were there, obstructing your path, demanding what’s left of your bag of sunflower seeds in exchange for safe passage, it would be half as frightening and ten times less dangerous. Laugh all you want, but if you do nothing else, take with you this one kernel of truth:
City squirrels: they’ll fuck you up.
For the first three-plus years of our daughter’s life, we had a nanny take care of her while we were at work. One morning as we were preparing to leave, when she was around a year old, she looked out our window into the tree directly outside and got into a staring match with one of the squirrels. They just stood there, eyes locked, neither moving a muscle. She didn’t understand the full import of what she was doing – she was just a toddler after all – but she was putting us all in mortal danger with this defiant stance. Our nanny, though? She seemed to get it. She walked up to our daughter, and in her Filipino accented English asked the following question:
“Is the squirrel your friend? Or your nemesis?”
Set aside for a moment the question of why a woman who occasionally needed prodding for English nouns would whip out a $100 word like ‘nemesis,’ and hear the wisdom in that query. It’s a reasonable question, asking the askee to consider the true nature of their relationship with the animal in front of them, while at the same time being so thoroughly confusing to someone who just recently hit double-digits on their Ronco ‘Months on the Planet Counter,’ that they have no other choice but to break contact with their adversary and gaze quizzically at their interrogator.
This approach, quite simply, is genius. Attempt to shoo the squirrel, and you greatly anger it, making matters worse. Rip the child from the enounter, and you get a fit, which almost certainly agitates the creature further. Ask an utterly puzzling question complete with vocabulary words, and the wee one will break contact of her own volition, which the squirrel reads as capitulation, thus defusing a highly volitile situation. It was quick. It was brilliant. It saved our lives.
