I'm currently sitting at my table during this dreary afternoon, waiting for more snow to fall upon New Hampshire, and I am reminded of a day much like this one.
This event occurred a few years ago, back when I owned acreage, and drove a rural school bus for a living. The days behind the wheel of the bus were long, more than occasionally interesting, and by the time I got home, I was frequently frazzled. Such is the state I found myself in when...
One afternoon, I came home, driving the school bus, and I could see from the driveway through my living room window, that there was an awful lot more movement than what I would usually see from cat and dog welcoming me back home. Something was up.
Not being sure what to think, I cautiously entered the house, and what do I see but that cat and dog have treed a squirrel on the floor-to-ceiling bookcase in the living room, and naturally, the little SOB was high up. I was tired, frazzled, and not very much not amused, but, there was nothing else to do in that moment besides getting the critter out of my house.
Not wanting to appear to be a total girl, and call guy friends weeping about there being a wild animal in the living room, and would one please be big and brave and wonderful and come take care of it, I realized there was only one way to go. I left cat and dog to keep the quarry treed in the bookcase, marched to the pantry, and got the broom.
With little more than an attitude, and a determination that this creature wasn't staying, I marched back out to the living room with the aforementioned broom, and commenced offensive maneuvers. By that, I mean I clocked the little bastard with the broom, and knocked him to the floor, much to the delight of cat and dog. Pandemonium ensued, and I finally had to come down a little harder than I meant to with the broom, stunning the creature to keep it in check, and to keep cat and dog from eating it right there on the spot.
While keeping the squirrel covered with the broom bristles, I swept him through the living room, through the kitchen, through the pantry, and finally, out the pantry door. Once out the pantry door, however, the squirrel apparently had gotten a second wind, and had decided it was going to get back *into* the house, by way of attaching itself to the broom handle, and trying to climb up the broom handle towards me! This was not what I had bargained for, nor was it going to be allowed to happen.
Looking back, if I'd had any sense left at all after my day on the bus, I'd have let go of the broom, backed up a step, shut the door, gone back into the house and had done with the whole thing. Instead I got pissed and wasn't letting go of anything.
With a surge of adrenaline, regrouping of attitude and a plethora of dirty words uttered at top volume, I jumped off of the pantry stairs into the knee-deep snow, and proceeded to swing the broom against the corner of the house. and again. and again. While dog and cat were both trying to come outside to watch the show!
So, to recap, at this point I've just driven into my driveway in a school bus built for special needs children, only to promptly come out the back door, jump into knee-deep snow with a broom in my hands, and commence to swinging the broom against the side of my house, swearing at the top of my lungs, while also yelling at cat and dog to keep their butts in the house.
I was, at that moment, unaware that brand-new neighbors had just moved in next door. That non-awareness did not last long, for as soon as I made one last *thwack* against the house, the squirrel went sailing off of the broom and across the back yard, and I gave the dog permission to come outside and do his business, I got the distinct feeling I was being watched.
I turned around, and there are my brand-new neighbors, having a wonderful laugh at my antics.
There was nothing else to do at that point but blush, attempt to recover what dignity I had left, wave and slink back into my house in total embarrassment.
The moral to this story: You never know who might be watching. Conduct yourself accordingly.
Also: Mothballs in the attic are a good squirrel repellent.
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