There’s a diagonal-mesh grate on our living-room window that squirrels have been routinely climbing on starting a few months ago. It’s a little freaky to be startled by a claws-on-steel sound and see the underside of a squirrel clambering across your backyard view but I’ve gotten used to it. I’ve also been amused at how they’re so oblivious to my presence; evidently they can’t see me because they don’t normally look down.
A few days ago, though, I became aware of a squirrel while I was focused on something else. The novelty of squirrels on my window having worn off, I didn’t look at it directly at first. But after a few moments I noticed something wasn’t right about it. I looked over at it and it was looking back at me.
As it dawned on me that this was perhaps the first time a window-squirrel had looked at me, a sense of something disturbing about the way it looked crept into my mind. It looked sort of spidery or ragged somehow, and it was breathing hard. And why was it still there, when it was looking right at me, its eyes seeming to go wide with fear?
This whole scene took probably a few seconds. The instant I realized that this was not one but two squirrels there was a startlingly fast burst of movement. The squirrel I was making eye contact with tore away out of sight, and I was left staring at the squirrel who’d been on top of (behind?) her, hapless, his pink tubular dork exposed. Then after a brief “what the fuck?” look around, he was gone.
Michelle walked in the room having just missed all this, so I retold the scene with dialogue:
“C’mon, it’ll be hot, we’ll do it right here hanging on this grate.”
“Baby…? There’s…Oh my god, there’s a man right there!“
Zip!
*snort!*