Stuff I Think About So You Don’t Have To: Squirrels, Nuts, Etc.

I’ve been noticing a lot of roadkill lately. So, naturally, this got me to thinking about whether any of the squirrels in this area ever die of natural causes or even get old enough to enjoy listening to NPR. It occurs to me that I’ve never once seen a group of gray-haired squirrels sitting around, having coffee and talking shit at McDonald’s at 7 a.m..

Which leads me to my next point. When a man gets to be 105 or maybe 110 years old, they’ll put him all over the news, as if to say, “Look, he’s NOT DEAD yet!”. And I guess that is kind of a big deal. But, really now, I’ll bet that that old man didn’t spend too much time during those 110 years playing in traffic. If he had, I’d tend to be more impressed.

Hmm. I suppose it’s never too late to start playing in traffic to impress girls, but your odds of survival probably aren’t good once you past 90. By the way, if you’re driving along and you see an old man playing in traffic, DO NOT speed up to challenge him. It’s a nice thought, but it could go very wrong.

Anyway, let’s go back to talking about squirrels. I hit one once. By the time I realized there was indeed a squirrel in the road, he was under my car. Thing is, I was worried that I hadn’t quite killed him and I imagined that the poor little critter was just lying in the street bleeding to death. So, I went back to run over him again to make sure he was completely dead and not suffering.

I felt just awful. So, of course, I told my mother about it, in hopes that she’d sympathize.

It didn’t quite go the way I planned.

I told her the whole story, down to the last gory detail, to which she responded by LAUGHING HER ASS OFF.

Apparently, my tragic story tickled her funny bone, and she simply couldn’t make herself stop giggling. When she had gotten control of herself enough to speak, she espoused this to me with tears of glee in her eyes:

“So, the poor squirrel is lying there in the road and shouting up to his wife who’s in a nearby tree with their two babies, ‘Did you see that crazy bitch hit me with her car?! I think I’m ok, though…I was just stunned for a minute there. Don’t worry, honey. I’m gonna be fine. I’ll come back up there as soon as I catch my breath…..OH GOD! NOOOOO! Here she comes AGAIN!!!'”

After sharing that, she threw herself back into fits of laughter so strong that she had to excuse herself to pee.

The moral of the story, dear friends, is this: Don’t tell my mother anything, ’cause she’s a nut.

Comments 11

  • I’ll bet all the squirrels have a picture of you hanging in their nests so they can run the other way of they see you coming.

  • I am laughing so HARD right now! AHAHAHAHA!

  • Hahahaha, I don’t know who’s the real nut: you or your mom!

  • I wonder if there are now big WANTED! ARMED and DANGERIOUS posters of you now in the squirrel post office?

  • i thought that was a horrible story until i read your mom’s response. now i just got a letter confirming my seat in hell.

  • Thanks for providing the first real laught I’ve had all week, Debbie. 🙂

  • THUMP THUMP THUMP!

    love you, Mom

  • I hit a squirrel a couple years ago and I CRIED. And I went back to make sure he was dead, and luckily, he was.

    When I was in high school, I hit a bird that flew in front of my car, and I showed up at my Dad’s high school reunion (where I had been driving to) and I was crying and told my Dad I hit a bird, and Dad responded “Just wait until you hit a DOG!”

    Thanks, Dad.

  • Bwahaha, great Mom. Nothing like putting your feelings of anguish in perspective, lol. Great writing, I had a good belly laugh.

  • What is it they say about the acorn and the tree? No, not squirrels. They probably have many parables about acorns & trees.

    They (the human “they”) say “the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree”. In this scenario, I think you’re the acorn. 😀

    I HATE it when I hit furry little animals. And really, even though a squirrel is just a rat with a better hairdo, and a great PR agent,(fuzzy cute tails are the new black, you know) I was horrified when I hit a squirrel a while back. And those damn fuzzy tails TWITCH and I wanted to cry.

  • Squirracle
    squirracle (skwûr-kl) n. Divine intervention that allows an ordinary gray squirrel to survive eight lanes of rush hour bumper to bumper traffic on I-95 in Woburn, MA….