Night of the Great Freak-Out
I like to sleep. Strike that. I love to sleep. I love to get into my comfy jammies, climb into my comfy bed, lay my head down on my comfy pillow, pull my comfy, comfy comforter up over me (where it will stay until at some point in the night I will curse it and fling it off in a desperate attempt to be less than twelve thousand degrees) and drift off into never never land. Aahhh...peaceful, quiet, dreamy sleep. The calm, the serenity, the joy, the voice telling me to wake up, there's a squirrel in our room.
Start of the great freak out.
"What?? What did you say??" I am instantly wide awake, terrified, and panicked. "There is a squirrel in our room," my husband repeats calmly as he gets up and turns the light on. Wait. Wait. Number one. What are you talking about?? Number two.
What are you talking about?? " I heard something in the wall earlier so I knew a squirrel found its way in again." (Yes, we have had squirrels before. In our attic. Which is bad enough. But the attic is, well, an attic. It's way up there. Far away from me. Mike sets a few traps, gets the squirrels and I never have to deal with them. Ever. Ever ever). "I felt something touch my head," he says, "and I thought it was you but when I looked, you were way over in the bed so it couldn't have been you. I thought maybe I imagined it but a few minutes later I heard rustling and then papers fell off your nightstand."
I want to do multiple things at once: throw up, burn my sheets, seek the immediate aid of a Freudian-trained therapist and cry hysterically.
Mike at this point has the lights on, a broom in his hand and is looking under the bed. "Yup, there's a squirrel all right." I am sitting bolt upright in bed with all of the covers wrapped so tightly around me I am suffocating. I'm not sure what my thinking is...that the squirrel will jump back up on the bed and want to cuddle up and share my blankie.... I don't know......but I feel a fierce need to shield myself. Mike sees the squirrel and starts to prod it out with the broom. The squirrel races out from under the bed and makes a mad dash for the bedroom door. Right before our very eyes we see the squirrel squeeze through the bottom of the door out into the rest of the house. Nooooooo!!
We race to the door, open it, and ...nothing. No squirrel anywhere. Mike turns on all the lights...hallway, kitchen, living room. Nothing. Mind you, I am operating in full on freak out panic mode at this point. Not only is there a squirrel in my house, there is now a squirrel loose in my house somewhere. Which means that at any moment I could round a corner or open a door or pick a up a discarded sweatshirt off the floor and there will be a squirrel waiting to jump out at me. (sidebar: I do not like to be scared. At all. Ever. My poor husband used to come home from work, walk into the house and if I was in the bedroom and didn't hear him come in would have me walk around the corner into the kitchen only to let out a blood curdling scream upon seeing him. Now that's a nice greeting after a long day at the office, huh? Thus, the following rule: Always, always sing out loudly "I'm home!!" upon entering the house. A simple rule that has saved us both from near heart attacks multiple times).
We search and search....no squirrel. Mike's searching involves physically moving from room to room, looking under and around furniture, moving things, checking in closets. My searching involves standing perfectly immobile in one spot, furtively darting my eyes back and forth, readying myself to jump on the kitchen table at a moment's notice.
We search / stand for half an hour. Nothing. No squirrel anywhere. "Well, I don't think we're going to find it now. Let's just go back to bed," Mike says, heading towards the bedroom. I tiptoe behind him (why am I tiptoeing??), follow him into the bedroom and gingerly hop up into the bed, getting dizzy from the motion of my head jerking in every direction at once, looking for the squirrel. "Mike, there is absolutely no way I am going to be able to fall back to sleep now knowing there is a squirrel loose somewhere in ZZZZZZZZZZZ. "
My alarm goes off at 5:15. I hazard a fuzzy squirrel running across my feet and run into the kitchen to turn my coffee on. I have my priorities even in the most dire of circumstances. Then it's off to the bathroom for a quick shower. Two minutes in Mike calls out to me. Robbie, who had fallen asleep in the family room the night before, called on the home phone (kids these days) to tell him there were animals in the family room with him. O.M.G. The squirrel has my baby!! I jump out of the shower, throw my bathrobe on and race to save my son. Ok, ok. This did not really happen. What really happened is that I stayed in the shower for as long as I possibly could hoping and praying that by the time I got out my 17 year old baby (happy birthday, Robbie!) and his father would have defeated and disposed of the enemy.
No such luck. The enemy was very much still alive. But at least Mike had it cornered in the closet. He was holding the broom in one hand, clearing out the closet with the other. Finally he had everything off the closet floor. The squirrel was hiding behind a little built-in shelf in the back of the closet. "There are two of us going in this closet, " Mike said, "but only one of us is coming out." He told me to close the door behind him and shove a blanket under it. That was my job, to make sure that blanket was shoved good and tight under that door. "No matter what I say, do not open this door," Mike says. He walks into the closet and I quickly shut the door behind him. I immediately hear a muffled "Get me out, get me out, get me the hell out of here!!"
Did I mention this squirrel was a flying squirrel? Yes. A flying squirrel. They really do exist. And I have one. In my house. In my closet. With my husband.
I hear thuds and bangs and grunts and noises bouncing off the walls and floor and ceiling. I do not remember this but afterward my husband told me all he heard at this time was me on the other side of the door repeating something over and over. Not "be careful, please be careful" or "please dear god, don't let the squirrel bite Mike and give him rabies" or "thank god I have such a wonderful husband who will risk his life to protect me from this squirrel." ....no, not any of those things. Apparently what I felt the need to repeat over and over was: "I can't believe this is happening to me."
All of a sudden Mike yells out, "he's trying to get out under the door!!" Under the door. Where I have shoved the blanket. My one job. To make sure that blanket was shoved tightly all the way under the door. Along the whole door. Not missing a spot. Not missing the one spot the squirrel would find and burrow under. I see the blanket move. I see a lump under the blanket. I feel Mike trying to open the door to get at the squirrel. I do what I feel needs to be done in this situation. I scream.
The squirrel runs into the middle of the room, does a victory dance, and races away.
Thwarted. Again. I cannot believe it. Robbie grabs his pillow. "Ok, well, I'm going upstairs," he says, clearly having had enough of a squirrel interfering with his birthday sleep. Mike goes back to the bedroom to get ready for work. I go to the kitchen to fix myself some breakfast. My fear is starting to turn to anger. This little monster is getting the better of us. I don't like it. I don't like it one bit.
I bring my breakfast into the bedroom and sit on the edge of the bed. I'm talking to Mike, watching Morning Joe and sipping my coffee. And see it. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the squirrel run across the living room. I cannot believe it. Now I'm really angry. That stupid squirrel is just toying with me. That's it. I've had it. Enough. You interrupted my morning coffee. This is war.
"
Squirrel!!" I yell out and race into the other room. Mike is two seconds behind me. We see it run into the family room. We move so fast we are like two blurs. There! There it is! It jumps up onto the back of the chair. We see it jump onto the curtain and climb up to the top. It is sitting on the curtain rod. Mike heads toward it with the broom. With a steely glint in my eye I slam the door shut. And reach for a blanket.
