Squirrel in the House

Text copyright © 2016 by Vivian Vande Velde

Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Steve Björkman

All Rights Reserved

HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

www.holidayhouse.com

ISBN 978-0-8234-3744-3 (ebook)w

ISBN 978-0-8234-3745-0 (ebook)r

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data

Names: Vande Velde, Vivian, author. | Björkman, Steve, illustrator.

Title: Squirrel in the house / by Vivian Vande Velde ; illustrated by Steve Björkman.

Description: First Edition. | New York : Holiday House, [2016] | Summary: “A Squirrel narrates this story of a family get-together turned upside down when he climbs down the chimney to join the festivities”— Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015035413 | ISBN 9780823436330 (hardcover)

Subjects: | CYAC: Squirrels—Fiction. | Humorous stories.

Classification: LCC PZ7.V3986 Sq 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015035413

Dedicated with appreciation to Steve Björkman, whose lively illustrations brought Twitch to life in
8 Class Pets—
and who encouraged me to write another story about him

Twitch, the School-yard Squirrel

Inside vs. Outside

Outside

Inside

People Children

Not a Good Idea

Table Manners

Hello, Dog?

No Pets in Mother's Room!

To the Rescue

Home Sweet Home

The dog who lives next door to the yard where I live tells me that people call dogs “man's best friend.”

Well, actually, the dog doesn't so much tell me this as he yells it. Usually while he's chasing me. Often the dog gets so angry when he sees me that he tries to catch me. I don't know why he gets angry. I guess some dogs are just highly excitable that way. But when he runs after me, he can only go so far. Then his leash stops him.

I try to point things out to the dog, purely for
educational purposes. I live in the school yard, so I am a very well-educated squirrel. I say, “Man's best friend, huh? You're tied to a tree. You did notice that, didn't you? My friends don't tie me to trees.”

Time and again the dog gets so angry about the life lesson I've tried to give that he forgets about his leash. He lunges, he runs out of leash, he bounces back.

Very calmly, not to tease him but only to explain the way things are, I say to the dog, “I think it's squirrels who are man's best friend. That's why the man who lives here ties you up—so you can't bother me.”

The dog is not very smart. He does not appreciate my trying to educate him. Sometimes the dog gets so angry he forgets words. He barks the bark that is just noise: “Bark! Bark! Bark!”

I never forget words, and I never bark.

Still, the man who is not the dog's best friend is not very smart, either. He doesn't realize that he doesn't have to tie up the dog to keep him from catching me. I can always climb a tree to get out of the dog's reach.

From the tree, I can drop walnuts onto the dog's head.

Purely for educational purposes, of course.

Another way that squirrels have a better life than dogs do—besides the whole tied-to-a-tree-with-a-leash thing—is that dogs sometimes have to go Inside with the people. Squirrels never have to go Inside.

Well, we get to go inside trees where there's a hollow, but that's only if we want to. And that's not the same thing anyway.

Inside for dogs means even more rules than dogs have when they're outside. Inside means no running around as fast as you want to, no digging, only eat
when the people decide you're hungry and wait for the people to tell you that you need to poop or pee. I know all this because I sometimes hear the man who lives with the dog explaining the rules. Sometimes he explains them very loudly.

There are no rules for squirrels. Except for the obvious: Don't let the owls catch you.

(Dogs don't have to worry about owls. Dogs think that's because most of them are so much bigger than owls. I think it's more likely that dogs don't taste good, and that's why owls don't eat them.)

So we squirrels get to run around as much as we want to, which is good, because we usually want to. We can dig wherever we choose, which usually means where we bury our food to hide it for later. We can eat whenever we want, so long as we remember where we've buried our food. And, of course, we can poop and pee as we see fit. The sense of that goes without saying.

The dog who lives next door to my yard (which is bigger than his yard, by the way—not bragging, just saying), the dog tries to convince me he has it better. “It's about to rain, squirrel,” he says, sniffing at the sky. “Master will bring me inside, where it's nice and dry, and you'll be all wet.”

“I like rain,” I tell the dog. “Rain washes me off. You have to have the man wash you off with a hose and that stuff that bubbles and that he says smells like Tropical Sunset for Dogs with Sensitive Skin. I don't know what tropical sunsets are, but I suspect only tropical sunsets are supposed to smell like tropical sunsets.”

Sometimes the dog will say, “I smell snow coming. Do you like to wash in the snow, squirrel?”

That just goes to show how not-smart the dog is. “You can't wash in snow,” I tell him. “Unless it's melted snow. And melted snow is water, not snow. Didn't your mother teach you anything?”

“But snow is cold,” the dog tells me. “Too bad for you that you have to be outside in the cold.”

“That's why my blanket comes attached,” I say, waving my tail in front of his face. But only when he can't get any closer because of the leash. When snow comes, I wrap my tail around me in my cozy nest in the tree hollow. I'm as warm as I need to be.