Advertisement I know of one squirrel who was too late learning that.
Now, there had been a lot of rain near the lake place, and I figured the water table might be up, but it seemed odd the sump kept kicking in so regularly and running so long but not so odd I was willing to get up out of bed to investigate. I did think it odd the next day, when I checked the discharge just to be sure it was running free and clear, to find it both wide open and dust dry. The fact the sump was running when I stepped inside convinced me it was time to go downstairs and take a look.
Sure enough, down in the hole, it was pumping its little heart out, whirring like crazy in the inch or so of water that collects below the intake, almost a foot below the level that is supposed to trigger the switch. Visions of a trip to the home store and an afternoon of impromptu plumbing edged aside the plans for gin and tonic under the trees until the maglight beam fell on two beady little eyes looking up from beneath a dislodged float.
Now, I not only don’t know why an animal that the Lord intended to dwell in the treetops found its end in the deepest, dankest spot in the cellar, I don’t want to know. What I am is grateful that he met his end in a spot cool enough to keep him relatively fresh, making extrication and disposal only moderately distasteful rather than the ruination of lunch, supper and possibly the weekend.
I tried to put a shine on things by reminding myself it would have been far, far worse had it been a skunk but to no avail. Skunks just don’t get into the kind of trouble that routinely befalls squirrels.
I think that may be because skunks still know that we don’t like them for all I know they might even know why. One thing is certain: Send a skunk waddling down a crowded street and that street will become instantly deserted, save for the brave unfortunates swaddled in haz-mat gear, bearing down on that skunk with no goodwill in their hearts. A skunk knows where he or she is unwelcome.
But no squirrel in this city will elicit the same reaction. We think they’re cute and some of us even toss out cobs of corn so they have plenty to eat in the winter. Long gone are the days when every householder had a well-oiled squirrel gun hung over the mantle now the little buggers are coddled, protected and taken to the vet when a mishap befalls them. In return, they’ve become a danged nuisance.
Years and years of quasi-pethood have caused urban squirrels to all but completely forget that their role in the great chain of being is to be a prey species. In short they’re supposed to keep their heads down, ears up and their bushy-tails clear of anything or anybody that might take a notion to eating them. In the wild, that pretty much means any critters of greater ferocity than bunny rabbits and bull frogs.
But after generations of in-town living where even cats are kept on a leash they’ve become invincible in their own itty-bitty minds. Lords of all they survey at least all they can skitter up, scamper across or squeeze into.
This is working out for neither man nor squirrel. Squirrels are discovering the twin hazards of gravity and truck tires when they lose precarious footing on coaxial cable strung high above a busy street. People are kept awake until the wee hours by inconsiderate squirrels having a mid-week barn dance in the attic or vertical foot races in the walls. And when bushy tails short circuit transformers and high tension lines n both man and squirrel are the worse for it.
That electrifying occurrence is far from uncommon. In just the past couple of weeks squirrels have put out the lights for more than 10,000 residents both in Allentown, Penn., and Charlotte, N.C.; been blamed for a traffic signal outage that resulted in a rollover in Brockton, Mass.; caused a short circuit that resulted in 30,000 gallons of sewage being dumped into a municipal reservoir near Estes Park, Col.; started a fire that burned 5 acres and left 40 homes without power in Morgan Hill, Calif., and invaded a condominium complex in Ottawa, Canada, to the ongoing consternation of the rent-paying human residents and that’s just from the first three pages of Google results.
The critter in my sump pump didn’t even make the papers until now.
It seems to me, we have a bunch of squirrels that need educating, and we all know what that’s going to take.
Anybody have a good recipe for squirrel stew?
Contact Jerome Christenson at (507) 453-3500 or jchristenson@winonadailynews.com. For Jerome’s comments on this, that and something else check out “Up on the wrong side of the bed” at www.rivervalleyblogs.com/jerome or go to www.winonadailynews.com.
