Friday, August 29, 2008 | 37 responses | Filed Under: Daily & Why I Love Demerol
Mother Nature knows
wonderful ways of teaching–
Pay Attention Here:
Your mama said stay,
sit and behave, child of mine,
Long way to the ground.
Long tumbles are hard,
the wiser of us do know.
Lucky, your landing.
Safe, again, you are–
sit and behave, child of mine.
Fool-proof, luck is not.
So the oldest spawn found a squirrel.
A baby squirrel.
That fell out of its nest…
"Mom! What's a good name for a squirrel?"
"Tom's Pal Frank."
"Who's Tom?"
"The kid whose mom will let him get a pet squirrel."
"… but there's a baby one on the ground by the tree. It's really tiny and I think that its mom left it."
"Oh, joy… "
Now here's where I remind you all that I am an evil mother who routinely gives away the family pet. Like, all fifty of them (because I'm also the evil mother who is married to a man who has seen far too many Meg Ryan-esque films and thinks that bringing home a cuddly puppy is something all women find romantic).
It was a tiny thing— cute in an ugly sort of way. Seemed to be breathing fine and was making the little sucking motions with its little mouth [insert collective 'awwwww' here]…
And had the kid not been standing beside me, I'd have totally called it Dionne and walked on by.
But he was standing beside me, staring at me in that way that spawn does when they're secretly stashing away all of the details from a particular moment in order to reference it at a later date and hold it against you.
Like that time when I was thirteen and my mom had fifty too many Crown & Cokes and was demanding at the top of her lungs that the lady in the Burger King drive-thru tell her where the goddamn beef was.
And since I just so happen to bring that little incident up every time we pass a Burger King sign, I put the little rodent in a box (to the relief of the kid, of course) and did what any mother in my situation would do…
I plurked about it.
Thankfully, the marvelous being known as Joy knew of a great website devoted entirely to the rescue of squirrels… Apparently, baby squirrels fall out of trees a lot. Who knew, right?
The website said that I could simply stick "Dionne" (box and all) at the foot of the tree and that, as long as she wasn't boiling up in somebody's stew pot, its mother should come back to claim it. (It also said that if she didn't return in a couple of hours that I would have to feed the little bugger with an eyedropper on some sort of feeding schedule and raise it as my own until it was old enough to be set free back in the wild… Ummmm, yeah.)
So I did.
And she did.
And all was right with the world.
… right up until the point when the kid, while walking the dog this morning, actually watched the baby squirrel take yet another nose dive from its tree, that is.
And while I sat there listening to the kid describe how the little thing didn't manage to survive this fall, I started thinking about how many times we've seen a fallen squirrel in our tree-filled yard (0) and the odds of the same squirrel falling out of the same tree yet again so soon (pretty high) and realized that maybe, just maybe, that little squirrel didn't accidentally fall out of that tree at all…
Maybe, just maybe, there are mothers out there even more evil than the one that gives away the family pet.
Even if they are just squirrels.
And I'm really happy about that.
For more Haiku Friday, be sure to visit A Mommy Story.
August 29, 2008
Is it bad that I'm laughing? I will surely go to hell for laughing right?
It is sad that he didn't make it the second time around :( Wonder if I could do this with the kids?
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September 1st, 2008
That's okay… at least we'll all be together in Hell. At this rate, heaven is going to be one lonely ass place…
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August 29, 2008
I'm glad too.
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September 1st, 2008
Please tell me that you give away family pets too??? :)
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September 1st, 2008
Oh no, I am the person who collects the family pets while listening to threats of divorce from my husband and acquiring three, four, five maimed animals . However, since my daughter has been born I have shunned two cats to the outdoors. One is on the way outside, and one has three legs, so technically putting him outside is murder. He wins a reprieve. No, I am happy that there are mothers who are more evil than me, even if they are squirrel mothers. Cause right now I am thinking God made babies so cute so you don't chunk them out of the window at 3am.
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August 29, 2008
ROFL Yea…
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August 29, 2008
Well, I can add pushing babies out of the nest to I know why some mothers eat their young. Thanks for the laugh!
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August 29, 2008
awww poor little baby……
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August 29, 2008
I am also a mother who gives away the families pets that like to go nuts at any given time and scratch the hell out of me and only me. *taking a breath* So…thanks for the lesson in nature.
OH yeah…..Poor, poor little baby squirrel.
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August 29, 2008
Bwahahahah! I've got nothing clever, but this is hilarious. And sad. But mostly hilarious.
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September 1st, 2008
Yeah… mostly hilarious. LOL
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August 29, 2008
You didnt tell us it died. Sadness…. but you made it hilarious!
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September 1st, 2008
Thanks, honey!
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August 29, 2008
See? I told you, Squirrel and Dumpling Stew! My dad knows a few good recipes!
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September 1st, 2008
Now, I'm from Louisiana and am perfectly content eating some really weird stuff… But I just can't bring myself to eat rodents. No matter how good they smell under all that barbecue sauce.
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August 30, 2008
If you look hard enough, you can always find confirmation that you are not the worst mother on the planet. Trust me, I have to look every day just to be sure. ;)
So, did the spawn make you put Dionne back in the box and bury it?
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September 1st, 2008
Of course. LOL.
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August 30, 2008
i think the squirrel mom could be on to something here.
it certainly would save on angst in the later years.
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September 1st, 2008
Damn skippy.
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August 30, 2008
Wow. It's a real skill to combine such twistedness with humor and have it work. But you pull it off nicely.
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September 1st, 2008
You know… when you made this comment, I asked the hubby if he thought I had a twisted sense of humour… He said, "Duh."
So I guess a thank you is order? LOL
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August 30, 2008
LMAO! She did not. LOL
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September 1st, 2008
Better her than me. ('Cause you know it'd have died in like a week around here…)
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August 30, 2008
Oh my gosh, you are freakin' hilarious! LOL… I gotta show this to my husband.
We recently went to the High Desert Museum in Central Oregon. At the Owl cage we found a sign, explaining to us, why the owls were separated. Apparently the babies stressed out their parents so much that they ended up completely exhausted and their health suffered. Hence the separation. :) I think they should do that in my house. Put them somewhere else when I'm exhausted.
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September 1st, 2008
Are you serious??? That is freakin' hilarious. Next time, I am soooooo coming back as an owl.
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August 30, 2008
OMG, this was too funny! When you said that the squirrel fell again the same thought crossed my mind. Pushed or fell?
I'm soooooo not good with animals ;)
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September 1st, 2008
Me either… that's why I always give them away. ALWAYS.
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August 30, 2008
Maybe it's not the mom at all, maybe that little bugger is just too stupid not to fall out of the tree… survival of the fittest and all…
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September 1st, 2008
That thought crossed my mind as well… (But people hate it when you call babies (even squirrel ones) stupid for some reason. Same thing when you call them ugly. There's just no honesty left in this world, I tell 'ya.)
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August 30, 2008
What a morbidly awesomely twisted post . . .
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September 1st, 2008
Dude, I got two "Twisted"s in one post. I am officially awesome. LOL.
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August 31, 2008
All I've gotta say is, "Damn you! Now I've got 'Walk on By' stuck in my head!" Get it out, now. Oh yeah, poor little baby squirrel.
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September 1st, 2008
Dude, you totally deserve a lousy button: Click Here
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August 31, 2008
Aww poor little squirrel, shame the fall snuffed it out.
I did not realise that the mum would come and get them again though, cool to know! :P
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September 1st, 2008
Me either! The website said that it didn't matter if you touched it or not, they'd still come back. Pretty cool, huh?
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September 2, 2008
I SO understand you.
Right now we are a NO pet family. I am allergic to almost every animal with hair. Now I just have to come up with some excuse for lizards, snakes, etc. before my two-year old grows up!
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September 5th, 2008
Maybe you could tell him that they make you pee in the bed? LOL. My mom totally used to tell me that about wildflowers to keep me from bringing loads of them into the house… It's the same concept, right?
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