Squirrel in the House (2 page)

But I am curious. I can hear some of what goes on Inside through the walls. And I can look Inside through the windows.

But sometimes I wonder what Inside feels like.

One day the snow comes down very fast and for a long time. The wind blows from exactly the wrong direction: directly into the hole in my tree so that my cozy nest in the hollow is no longer cozy. The wind howls and whistles. The wind batters my cushion of dead leaves so that they crumble into bitty bits that make me sneeze. The wind ruffles the fur of my tail and wiggles its way into my bones.

Because I'm cold, I cannot sleep. Because I cannot sleep, I grow hungry.

The problem is: I've finished the last batch of summer
nuts and berries that I dug up and brought back to my nest. If I want to eat, I have to dig up another of my food hiding places.

The other problem is: I'm such a good hider, sometimes I have trouble finding my hiding places.

And meanwhile the snow is still coming down.

Which am I more? I ask myself: hungry or cold?

I paw through the scraps of this and that in my nest—nutshells, bark, twigs—hoping to find a piece of something tasty that I might have overlooked.

After I pick up what I suspect may be the same walnut shell I've examined three times already, I toss it outside.

The wind blows it back in, and it bounces off my head.

I look out from the hole in my tree.

The snow covers all the branches of all the trees. On the ground, it has piled up higher than I am tall. Sometimes, when snow is crisp, I can walk on it. Other times, when snow is fluffy, I sink down into it. Whichever kind of snow this is, my paws are going to get cold.

Then I notice the house where the dog lives. I remember the dog saying, “Too bad for you that you have to be outside in the cold.”

I realize the dog was inviting me in. That's because everybody loves squirrels. Even the dog. He just sometimes gets excitable.

I have to remember my manners. I will invite the dog to come visit me.

Not that he can climb my tree. Or squeeze through the hole. Or fit in my nest.

But it will still be polite to ask.

After I've visited him.

The house has three doors. Two of them are at ground level and are people-sized, but the third is obviously meant for squirrels. It is squirrel-sized, and it is on the roof with easy access via tree. The squirrel door is actually the
finest of the three, as it has a grand brick entryway. This entryway goes straight down from the roof right into the heart of the house. Sometimes smoke and heat come out of this roofy doorway, but on this day the man who lives with the dog has not turned on the smoke and heat. As though the dog's words weren't enough, this is a clear signal that the man, also, wants me to come in.

People LOVE squirrels. They put feeders out, just for us, high up off the ground so the dogs can't reach them. Sometimes birds eat our food, but we squirrels know it's been put out for us, not them, because of the playgrounds so many people build around our feeders, with rides for sliding and swinging and spinning on. The birds don't use the rides; they only eat the food.

And now both man and dog have invited me in. I can't wait to see what wonders they have prepared for me Inside.

Running fast so that my toes don't get cold, I leap from branch to branch until I'm above the roof. I jump, but my toes must be colder than I thought, and I don't go as far onto the roof as I expected, and the roof is icy, so I slip down toward the edge.

My paws scrabble for something so I won't fall off,
and I catch hold of the metal squirrel ride thingy that most people have all around the edge of their roofs. On rainy days, these things fill with water for slipping and sliding around in, and at the corners of the house, they form slides down to the ground. It's a lot of fun to go down these water slides. The people should build some for themselves. On this cold day the squirrel ride thingy is filled with snow, not water. Still, it's good for catching hold of.

With a squeal, the whole thing pulls away from the roof. The man really should have built it better: I could have gotten hurt! But all is fine. I'm able to scramble back onto the roof and up the outside of the brick entryway to the squirrel door. I sit on the edge and look down. I'm far up, but I can see Inside.

The brick entry hall that leads down from the squirrel door on the roof is very long. It is also very dark. Not to mention steep. Some of the bricks are slippery because of the soot and ash from when the man makes fire. But I'm very sure-footed.

Until all that soot and ash makes me sneeze.

Then I go down the last bit quite quickly. Not falling. But quickly.

I land on pieces of a cut-apart tree at the bottom. Obviously this is the man's attempt to re-create my
tree that is Outside here Inside. It is his way of saying, “Welcome, Twitch.”

For a few moments I can't see because of the big black cloud of soot and ash that has come down with me. “Hello,” I call out to let everyone know I have arrived, even though I can tell, by listening and smelling, that neither the dog nor the man is in this room. That's okay. I can make myself at home, which is what good hosts, if they were here, would tell me to do.

Once the black cloud settles, I see that the floor beyond it is white and it looks fluffy, sort of like snow, but not cold. This is convenient for not getting lost because I'm leaving little black footprints wherever I set my paws down.

From another part of Inside, I hear the dog. “Bark. Bark. Bark,” he says, too excited to form words. I hear the nails on his not-good-for-climbing doggy paws as he comes running on a hard surface toward the part of Inside where I am. I hear the man yelling, “Cuddles!
Cuddles!” which is what he calls the dog. The dog calls himself Wolf-Born, the Swift and Ferocious. I call the dog the dog.

The dog runs into the room where I am and immediately sees me. He looks so excited, I decide we need some distance between us.

I jump off the fluffy white surface that isn't snow, back on top of the pile of wood. “Hey, dog,” I say.

He says, “You don't belong inside. Out! Out! Out! Out! Out!”

I say, “I just got here. Thanks for inviting me, by the way.”

He repeats, “Out! Out! Out! Out! Out!”

I scramble up the outside of the brick entryway that I used the inside of to come down from the roof. There's a ledge here, where the man who lives with the dog has gathered things. Squirrels mostly gather nuts and berries and seeds. People gather all sorts of things that even people must know are not things to eat. I don't recognize what the things are that the man has gathered except for some pinecones dusted with something that
makes them sparkle and a container with water and flowers (even though there are no flowers Outside, on account of the snow).

I'm so quick that the dog—I might have mentioned he's not very bright—hasn't seen where I've gone. So he starts looking for me by pawing through the pieces of tree where I landed when I first came in. The pieces of tree tumble out of their neat little pile and roll onto the white not-snow floor. The dog keeps barking, now asking, “Where are you? Where'd you go?”