George Graham

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. Or Was it Sabotage?

It could have been one of the dirty tricks those Republicans resort to in their struggle for political power. They will stoop to anything. The latest ploy is erasing signatures from the petition to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. I’m not sure how they do it but they’ve been going online and sabotaging sites that collect the signatures.

And lately, my blog site has been mysteriously going down. Could it be sabotage? You know how I’ve been lambasting those right-wing nut cases. So when a series of minor disasters prevented me from writing a blog yesterday, I wondered…

Here are the facts as I know them.

I was working in the garden when Sandra screamed that some “creature” was making rustling sounds under the computer desk in the den. So I ran to see what was going on.

I was just in time to glimpse a bushy tail disappearing behind the wastebasket.

“It’s a squirrel,” I reported.

“Quick, shut the doors,” Sandra shouted. “The cats will get it!”

She rounded up Katy and her kittens, Xandy and Bonnie, and shut them in the house, while I tried to get the squirrel to safety.

But there was no sign of the creature.

We had to find it and get it out of the den because Katy and her kittens eat and sleep there. One of them had probably caught the squirrel and brought in inside, and they would be only too eager to finish it off.

So, instead of writing a blog, I spent the whole day helping Sandra move every piece of furniture, looking for the squirrel.  She decided she might as well sweep and dust in the process.

But the squirrel had disappeared.

Trust me. It had vanished.

So we moved the furniture back in place and left.

I was halfway between the bedroom and the shower, when I heard Sandra yelling at Bonnie. The squirrel had reappeared and Bonnie had spotted it.

“It’s just a baby,” Sandra shouted to me. “Come quick!”

I scrambled back into my clothes and headed for the den. We managed to get Bonnie out of there.

Now, to find that squirrel…

Not a chance. It had disappeared again.

We opened the door to the breezeway and left, hoping the squirrel would leave of its own accord. And it did. Or at least it tried to.

But before it could reach the door, Katy – who had slipped out of the house and was roaming around outside – was upon it. I was just in time to snatch the baby squirrel away from her claws as it tried to scamper up the bookcase.

I know squirrels bite. I had seen this movie – or something like it – before, and had the scars to show for it. But desperate times require desperate measures so I cradled the squirrel and stroked its little head in an attempt to calm it. As you can imagine it had almost died of fear.

This squirrel did not bite.

At least, not until I had carried it through a chilling drizzle all the way to the shed at the back of the garden, where it would be safe from the cats.

It was when I was releasing it inside the shed that it sank its teeth into my right index finger. It took me forever – or what seemed like forever – to pry its jaws loose and get my finger back.

I rushed my wounded finger into the house, leaving a trail of blood and yelling for Sandra to come and help me.

“Wash it off and I’ll put Polysporin on it,” she advised.

I stuck my finger under the tap in my bathroom sink as instructed. But the blood would not stop flowing.

So Sandra doused it in hydrogen peroxide and alcohol and smothered it with toilet paper… Two band aids later, the blood had slowed to a trickle.

Then it struck me. The last time I was bitten – by a cat on that occasion – the doctor had given me a tetanus shot… Rabies shots, too, but that’s another story.

“You think I should get a tetanus shot?” I asked Sandra.

She called Dr. Hernandez, and his nurse said yes, I should get a tetanus shot, but they didn’t have the vaccine there.

We ended up driving miles through the darkness and the rain to a walk-in clinic, which had just run out of the vaccine, and then searching for another one for hours…

Anyway, I did get the shot. But not before filling out the forms the county makes you fill out when you are a victim of an animal attack. Rabies, you know.

But the doctor assured me I wouldn’t get rabies from a squirrel. So the tetanus shot – and a prescription for antibiotics – sufficed.

I wonder about that squirrel, though. I’ve been reading about those experiments the Pentagon does with attack animals, and you know how conservative those military types are.

UPDATE: As I was finishing this blog, a Sheriff’s deputy arrived to make a report on the attack. He even took a picture of the wound- and of me in my robe and with my hair standing on end. I guess I am now in the suspicious characters file and the Pentagon will be watching me. Or maybe it’s just Animal Control bureaucracy. You think?

About the author

gwgraeme

I am a Jamaican-born writer who has lived and worked in Canada and the United States. I live in Lakeland, Florida with my wife, Sandra, our three cats and two dogs. I like to play golf and enjoy our garden, even though it's a lot of work. Since retiring from newspaper reporting I've written a few books. I also write a monthly column for Jamaicans.com