Driving 20 mph down a tree-lined, residential street this afternoon, I spied a curious sight.
A critter ran across the road into a yard. I am no stranger to critters. I live in the country, by cracky! I've been raised amongst the varmints. I've sunk my teeth into plenty of rabbits and squirrels and quail. I know quail. I've sold original pencil drawings of quail. This, my friends, was no quail.
My mind told me it was no rabbit or squirrel, either. It was that gray-white mottled fur common to both rabbits and squirrels. It did not hop, nor did it dart in a twitchy, stop-and-start manner. It sort of bounded in a straight line across a yard to a tree. Which it made no attempt to scale. Or to run around and play peek-a-boo. It sat on all fours, not on its haunches. Now here's the weird part: it had neither a bushy tail nor long ears.
This critter was either a rabbit with no ears, or a squirrel with no tail. It was the PAT of the animal world. You remember Pat. The ambiguous SNL character who did not carry money in a purse or wallet, but in a sports sack. Who chose not to watch the Giants/Forty-Niners game or Murphy Brown, but instead rented the movie Tootsie. Who had a significant other named Chris. I am afraid to see the significant other of this creepy yard critter. It might have a bushy tail and long ears.
My scientific background points me in the direction of a squirrel with no tail. Because it's easier to get a tail lopped off by accident than to lose both ears.
5 comments:
So, the cross-dressing critter just stared at you as you drove by? He who is curious would have tried to capture such a critter and bring it home to live in a smelly cage in our home until his sneaky wife released the critter back into the great outdoors. I speak from experience.
Ooh, maybe you've discovered a new species for those monster shows.
The illusive patsquatch.
Kathy,
He (or she) looked at me like I was the oddity. We can't even keep the animals that BELONG here from disappearing. And it's not because Hick or I secretly release them.
Tammy,
I LOVE that name. PATSQUATCH.
What a sight to see. But if it didn't dart in a twitchy, stop-and-start manner, then is it still a squirrel? Maybe it was a chipmunk? Or...a hamster?
Shannon,
A hamster. It was the perfect shape for a hamster, only bigger, with squirrel/rabbit-tinted fur. Don't get me started on the chipmunk. I had a near-death experience when I tried to save one from certain annihilation.
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