Home Of The Black Squirrels

Awright, folks, got a doozy for you.

1. To understand, we need a background in current events and the architecture of Castle Bedlam. The "Doom Room" is simply the downstairs bedroom in the finished basement; it earned its name when I moved here, and we put the cats, Doom and Pocky, in there and let them get acquainted with the natives via the crack under the door.

2. Earlier this week, Berni was disturbed to hear what she thought was something alive in the stovepipe, the chimney pipe for the downstairs woodburning stove. But the sound went away, and she went to work and forgot about it. I was a bit disturbed to note when I got home from work that the stove door was standing wide open, and the door gasket had been clawed loose... from the inside. Still... there were no footprints. The cats didn't seem especially perturbed. There were no gory little corpses anywhere. Whatever it was, it'd probably gone right back up the pipe, right?

That was Thursday.

Today is Sunday.

3. At one point today, Berni's washing some dishes, and I'm standing in the kitchen talking with her... but over the sound of the water, I am hearing odd noises. Sounds for all the world like an angry squirrel. It took a while to hit me. I glanced downstairs, and through the Doom Room's open door. Sitting on top of a sealed storage bucket is a squirrel, blackened by soot, cursing like mad at Pocky, who is staring a hole in him. "Ah... Berni..."

She cut the water off and came and glanced, and uttered an expletive.

I cautiously went downstairs, shooed the cat out of the Doom Room, and closed the door. The squirrel dived down into the storage buckets. There was no way we were getting him out of there short of removing every storage thingy from the room ... and did I really wanna DO that? This poor little guy hadn't had anything to eat or drink for DAYS... ghod, had he been dodging cats, sneaking upstairs to get water from the dispenser? Or had he just been hiding in there for DAYS?

4. Berni was standing in the snow in her bathrobe.

"Honey... you can't stand out here all DAY..."

"If I don't, we'll never know when he leaves."

She'd opened the windows in the Doom Room, and was waiting for the squirrel to leave. I'd hung a blanket out the window, trailing down to the floor, so he'd have something to climb.

The squirrel wasn't having any of it, and remained ensconced in the great pile of storage buckets in the back of the room. Frankly, I was sort of afraid to go move them. Certainly, if he was desperate enough to cuss out a grown cat at seven feet, he was crazy enough to go for my throat if he was cornered...

She'd laid down a few peanuts, and hopefully, he'd follow the trail of them to the blanket and climb out the open window.

"But I have to stay here," she said. "What if OTHER squirrels hear him cussin' in there, and decide to come IN?"

5. Berni came in out of the cold. We had agreed that no matter how warm and toasty it might be in there, it was unlikely that outdoor squirrels would willingly enter a place that smelt of humans and cats. "We'll just leave the window open and see if he hears the outside noise," we said, "and climbs up and escapes. Surely, he wants out."

6. "Come take a look at this," said Berni, from the kitchen.

I came downstairs and joined her in the kitchen. She was staring out the window. "Does that squirrel look a bit... sooty... to you?"

There was a squirrel on the rear table on the back deck, the location of my painting station and the customary feeding point for squirrels. And sure enough, there was a BLACK squirrel sitting on the table, frantically looking around for peanuts and sunflower seeds...

Black squirrels are not native to the Denver area. Yet, here one was.

I carefully stepped outside, opened the tin, and grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds. Sooty watched me with some trepidation, and jumped into the tree as I approached. I dumped the seeds onto the table, and he was already back on the table eating them before I reentered the back door.

"Poor little guy," I said.

"I heard someone romping across the roof," said Berni. "Next thing I know, he's on the table, looking around. In the place where they usually expect to find food..."