A Red Squirrel Journal

       The moths, raccoons and bears that visited my cabin had one thing in common . . .they eventually left. But one critter refused to depart. Partner. Now every cabin owner needs a Partner--an animal that passes his days a glance away from the screened porch; a critter that gets on with the business of food gathering, den-making and gets into just enough territorial disputes to keep it all interesting. I met Partner two years before. He emerged from the cavity of a pin oak as a tiny red ball with legs. And while all Northland births are special (save for a hatch of mosquitoes or black flies), the birth of a neighborhood red squirrel is cause for notice. Should he survive the perilous first three months, there is a fighting chance he will be around for years.
        And frankly I needed a Partner.
        I planned to stay on the island until the coming of ice and beyond. Anything adding color to the gray days of November would be welcomed. Partner would be that color. He got into plenty of scraps with less endowed squirrels and provided cheap entertainment.
        We often shared lunches . . .I snacked on cheese and crackers on the cabin steps, Partner finished off nuts and elm seeds on a tree branch. But with the solstice sun a month away, Partner entered the cabin. I thought it “cute” to see him scurry across the kitchen floor. I scribbled a few lines in my journal: a new critter added to my life list of cabin perpetrators. “Cuteness” belonged to Partner’s guise however. He was running surveillance--casing the joint.
        Now I knew firsthand about the havoc a red squirrel can wreak. During a two-month road trip through Canada, a faceless red rodent crawled through a half-open window in my 1988 Pontiac somewhere near the Red River Valley. The hitchhiker logged eighteen days and 625 miles before jumping ship somewhere near Red Lake, Ontario. Returning to Minnesota, I discovered how the rodent survived our shared journey. While cleaning the trunk, his mother load revealed itself. Cached in a perfect circle around the spare tire was $25.00 worth of almonds, peanuts, and cashews that I had written off as lost cargo. Making lemonade of the lemons left by the squirrel, I turned the rodent ring into the nut part of a holiday fruit and nut basket. The offering still sits on my living room table for uninvited guests to snack on.

. . . .

       Partner's back.
       I caught him finishing off a packet of mushroom flavored Lipton noodles. Reaching for the corn-thatch broom I chased him out with a stern warning. My scolding had little impact however. He returned hours later through a hole next to the water heater. I listened in as he finished off bulk popcorn, animal crackers (including the squirrel-shaped figure), and half the meat out of two bananas. Wasteful S.O.B.

Day 4: I plugged the hole next to the water heater and shut the cabin doors. Partner entered through an old stove vent. He made mince of an avocado, downed some Oreo cookies, and feasted on more bulk popcorn.

Day 5: With the doors shut, the hole next to the water heater plugged, and the stove vent sealed, Partner gnawed his way through particleboard covering a second story window where a mallard burst through two years before. He snacked on Uncle Ben's converted rice, the top of a chicken bullion cube, and more bulk popcorn.

Day 6: (sung to the 12 Days of Christmas) On the sixth day of infestation my true squirrel took from me . . . three girl scout cookies, two more ripe bananas, and an undetermined amount of bulk popcorn.

       In his latest thievery, Partner bit a hole in the aluminum porch screen to gain entry. This meant he could chew new holes whenever, and wherever, he wanted. With the threat of property damage, our relationship changed forever. Partner transformed from a lovable critter into a pesky varmint.

Days 7-12: Afraid to plug the screen hole out of fear that Partner would gnaw another, I resorted to violence to keep him at bay. From my desk, I hurled ballpoint pens each time he poked his little red head through the hole. The whirling ink deterred him at first, but, like a virus immune to treatment, Partner learned that pens rarely, if ever, hit their mark. He entered. He snacked. He overcame.

Day 16: I resorted to a more high tech form of ammunition. Pulling a 3.5-inch floppy disk from my computer, I hurled the hard plastic in Partner's direction. The disk served a good noisemaker, but rotated in flight and sailed past its mark. The bastard red continued to snack.

Day 18: Erasers replaced the disks. Lost cargo: popcorn, a pop tart and Captain Crunch breakfast cereal.

Day 24: Stopping Partner became an obsession. In a rage, I kicked off a hiking boot, raised it above my head, and whipped the hard leather at the varmint. The screen ripped from its tack and Partner could be seen on a dead sprint down the island path. I added new aluminum screening to my "to do" list.

. . . .

       "SON OF A $#%&!" I yelled surveying the noodles, flour, and seeds littering the cabin. I'd been away on a canoe trip and Partner ransacked the place. "YOU'RE A DEAD SQUIRREL PARTNER! DO YOU HEAR ME . . .DEAD!" A new hole chewed in the second story particleboard revealed his entry. Squirrel turds were EVERYWHERE. Imagine an M-80 pyroclastic exploding in a ten-pound box of All Bran cereal. Worse than the feces was the toilet paper. No. Partner was not potty trained. A well-meaning relative had purchased bulk packages the summer before. Partner shredded eight of the roles, turning them into bedding material. Rodent urine cemented the sheets to the floor. A scraper and paint thinner were necessary just to remove them. And my summer camping food . . .one hundred dollars of wild rice, pasta seasonings, dried fruits, beef jerky and curry couscous: RANSACKED! sampled all the dried goods and ruined the pricey stash. The food left was unfit for even the fruit and nut basket.
        THIS MEANT WAR!
        I made a special trip to Gus’s Hardware Store and sought expert help. "I've got squirrel problems Gus," I told the old Swede. "Do you have some kind of trap?"
Gus eyeballed me, and then offered a solution with his customary half-smile. "Got yerself some squirrels eh? Well, follow me to the back here and I'll show yer what we've got in the way of traps." Following the third generation Red Cedar Laker to the back of the store, Gus' solution came into view. Crossman made the small "traps," Remington made the large ones. "If you've got a steady hand," he said holding a small green box, "these here pellets will do the trick. If not, well, I suggest you go with 20 gauge shells . . .but you'll probably want to take yer firing outside before you go shootin' off a round of these."
I should have known. Gus was a Blaster.
        Most residents in the Red Cedar Lake Township are Blasters. I once interrupted old Bob Jorgenson from Shake-a-Leg Resort while he was on a red squirrel hunt. "You gonna eat those things?" I said to the usually kind-hearted woodsman. "Or are you just out for blood this morning."
        The Iowa transplant looked at me like I was crazy. "Eat them little red bastards? Not on your life!" Thumbing through a box of 22 caliber shells he added: "I'm making room for them lovable gray squirrels. Those red buggers are vicious when it comes to sharing a nut. We had three or four of the grays before the reds moved in. You know what happens when a gray high tails it away from a red?”
        "No,” I answered stumped by the image.
        "He gets ball-bit. Those red devils go right for the nuts. That's why you never see the grays in the same area as the reds."
        Bob was right. I asked the DNR a week later if such a fabulous story was true or if Bob was gearing up for grouse season. The Feds confirmed it. The reds are ball-biters. It also explained why no gray squirrels nest on the island.

. . . .

       To my dismay, there were no traps in Red Cedar Lake that didn’t go “bang!” I returned to the island shells in hand. Opening the cabin door, Partner gazed down at me from a support beam where he snacked on garlic-flavored croutons. "Do you know how close you are to death you ball-biting varmint?" I said flashing a fiery gaze in his direction.
Jogging over to a friend's cabin, I tried to remember how many years had passed since I had intentionally killed a wild critter. With Partner in the cabin, the time had come to fish or cut bait. The relatives would arrive in three weeks, if they discovered a squirrel in the house and toilet paper tunnels, there would be hell to pay.
        Unlocking the shed with the key left under the step (all island keys are left under steps) I gazed upon a rifle hanging just above a stuffed large mouth bass. The slick iron barrel and stained wood stock made the gun as much a wall orna ment as a weapon of destruction. It would take fifteen minutes to load the gun, jog back to the cabin, and put a bullet in Partner. No one would hear the gun shot. I could clean the cabin and toilet paper tunnels. Partner could be buried behind The Old Shed next to the robin killed by my cat when I was six.
        In seconds, I lifted the rifle off the wall. I secured it under my arm, then jogged up the hill and burst into my cabin. I watched as my nemesis rolled around in a bag of Kellogg’s cereal. "It's all over Partner," I said with gun in hand. "You've eaten your last corn flake."
        Partner galloped playfully out of the kitchen. He then scaled the cabin wall exiting through his particleboard escape route. Watching him come to rest on a maple branch, I slid a single shell into the barrel and brought the bolt to bear. With the sound of imagined spurs jingling with each step I knelt on the porch floor. I slipped the gun out a hole chewed by Partner and sited the varmint.
        He sat fat and content on the limb pulling frosted flake after frosted flake from the side of his cheek. "I can do this," I said to myself. "It's time to end this charade." Closing my right eye to the world and resting my face on the oily wood stock, I drew a bead on Partner. Had I pulled the trigger a month ago, I would have saved $150.00 worth of food. The time spent cleaning up could have been spent hiking, canoeing, or reading. This squirrel had done nothing but take. Son of a bitch probably didn’t even remember what an acorn tasted like: squirrel on the dole this one. Society would not miss Partner; other red squirrels chased away by his tyranny would not miss him. Fattened on GORP, Lipton noodles, and bulk popcorn, he was no longer a wild and worthy critter.
        Partner turned on his limb, lifted his bushy tail and let out a series of chirps. His black, shiftless, eyes met my green, tired, eyes. We stared at each other. The stakes were high. I aimed the rifle at Partner's head, then at his fattened belly. To generate the anger needed to pull the trigger, I conjured images of his urinating on my cabin floor and cementing toilet paper to the wood. Awareness, not anger, filled my site however. I noticed things--nuances about Partner I previously overlooked: the way the sunlight illumined each strand of his tail; the rapid beating of his heart; his claw-like toenails.
        Those eyes: tinted windows to the world that masked his hopes and fears. I saw a reflection in those eyes. Not of myself, but of a family of black bears--each with bullet hole in their head. Like Partner, those Boundary Waters bears failed to heed the boundaries of man. They were shot dead like mongrels because of it. Seeing Partner in his rightful environment, the moon in a dewdrop, I opened my closed eye and took in the beauty of my one-time friend. Under the summer’s sky, amidst the passing clouds and drumming of a ruffed grouse, I considered my place under the sun. Red squirrels have called Windigo Island home for thousands of years. Black bears roamed the forests near the Boundary Waters for an equally long time. That bricklayer had no right to shoot those bears in the name of territory. He built a house in theirs; we built a cabin in Partner's.
       "You pull this trigger Dave," I said to myself, "and you'll be no better than the bricklayer. You're the one who let the cabin run down, who covered the window with wood instead of glass, who didn't take the time to mend the screen and cover the holes. You're the one who turned a wild animal into a cabin marauder. Fix the damn cabin!"

. . . .

       Lowering my weapon, I headed outside to plead my case. "Listen here Partner," I said in as serious a tone as one can take with a rodent. "I'm not going to shoot you with a 22 bullet. Instead, I'm going to plug every last hole in the cabin; that means replacing the trapezoid window too. I know this is your territory but I've got relatives coming and that means Poisoners and Blasters who don't pay heed to evolutionary claims. If you chew another hole in the screen I'm going to trap and canoe you over to Mackenzie Island. That's in the middle of the lake Partner. There's northern pike and muskie in those waters. You won't get a hundred yards off shore before one of those monsters turns you into a critter fritter. And forget about the occasional handout. You'll learn the hard way that corn flakes don't grow on trees. We have to make this work. There's no other way."
        The squirrel turned and galloped off the maple branch back into the hardwood forest. Over the next two weeks, I worked ten-hour days repairing and sprucing up the cabin. Partner, for his part, continued to enter through secondary holes and escape routes to feed on crackers and cereal. Finally, on Day Thirteen of the cabin-project, seventy-two hours before the coming of relatives, only one possible entry point remained: the trapezoid window. Three trips to Lake Country Glass (the first window broke on a speed bump, the second on rough water) and I had the awkward glass secured. I pounded in the ceremonious last nail.

. . . .

        The squirrel in the cupboard, I propped open the front door and grabbed the corn-bristle broom. Partner took off running. He dashed for the hole under the water heater . . .plugged. Next he tried the opening in the screen . . .plugged. He pranced toward a secret escape route through a wall-socket . . . plugged. Partner's little chest beat madly as he realized the cabin was no longer his own. I followed, broom in hand, as he circled the airtight cabin. Collecting himself, the little rodent jogged up the wood stairs and jumped onto the main support beam. He paused as if to say, "ahh trapezoid" then galloped playfully towards what had been a sure fire escape route. In a moment for the ages, I watched as he crashed into the newly installed 1/4-inch glass. His little squirrel feet raced madly as he tried to secure a foothold on the window face. In a finale grander than any I could have scripted, gravity lifted him away from the window and into empty space. In that eternal pause, Partner plummeted twelve feet before bouncing off a couch pillow and landing on the floor. I raised the broom above my head. In hockey stick fashion, I shot my stunned nemesis toward the open door.
        Three cheers for the Sweeper!

. . . .

       For a glorious day, Partner was nowhere to be seen. Forty-eight hours before the arrival of relatives, however, he returned. Sitting on his favorite maple branch he stared down at me. Surprise of all surprises, in his little squirrel hands he rotated a half-eaten mushroom. Taking my bowl of cereal to the front steps I joined my one-time friend for a meal. After ten minutes, he hopped down from the tree limb and approached at his usual gallop. Six inches from my foot, he snatched a frosted flake that had fallen from my bowl. I interpreted the bold maneuver as a truce and spooned out a small helping to compliment his new macrobiotic diet. The little guy probably had the shakes from being weaned off junk food so quickly.
        The next day, raking leaves and cleaning up the yard, I heard faint squeaks and squeals from a hole in the fallen ash tree where Partner emerged two years earlier. The squeals grew louder, more desperate. I removed a low hanging branch and spied the source of the chatter. Naked, innocent, and struggling for life were four baby squirrels. Their small den was lined with, of all things, toilet paper and bulk popcorn. Partner was more Betty  Davis than John Wayne. I smiled . . .a godfather of sorts.
        That evening I tracked down the last pile of squirrel terds and dust panned them ceremoniously into the quiet night. Exhausted, I collapsed on my porch bed and stared through the new aluminum screening into the dark forest. The cabin, with its new window, its fresh latex paint (green on the trim, flat brown on the face), and with every tunnel sealed was squirrel-proof and ready for the relatives. A crescent moon illumined the broadleaf maple, Partner’s favorite perch. And one of life's strange chapters neared completion.
       That night, I dreamt of canoeing across a large Canadian lake. I saw no cabins in need of repair, no squirrel problems to attend to: only granite, spruce bogs and an endless chain of lakes. Call it a midnight summer's dream. The kind you forget then later remember when you lay eyes upon that unnamed body of water. In such times of deep sleep, the mind folds into the great void; our senses are left to process the night's callers without the great conductor of "self." We take in the hoots of reassurance that pass between barred owls, record the chorus of mosquitoes and process the midnight vigils of common loons.
        This awareness is our birthright and also a survival mechanism. When a predator enters our sacred grove, this quiet knowing returns us from Santayana's pillared cloisters of mind. You hear the low steady growl and you are awake. Your heart pounds before you even know why. Dreamy images of far-off places give way to the panic of the black moment.
        The animal under attack screams. It reverberates within as if the terror were your own. For millions of years you have listened to those screams: sometimes as predator; other times as prey. A spider monkey holding fast to a tree trunk, a leopard crouched in savanna grass . . .your teeth have severed backbones, your eyes closing under a jugular bite.
        Outside my screen porch, the ancient dance of life and death played itself out. The first shriek from the animal under siege posed the question: “Why?” Why death during this the most vibrant of seasons? Why, with all the other critters around, “Why me?” The siren scream that followed--revolving in pitch and circling the night sky like a raptor bore pure, unmediated, terror. Realization. Crossing of the void that separates life from death. Not the sound of ecology: a quiet culling of the herd--no, this scream spoke of clawing, ripping, chewing on something that desperately wanted to be alive.
        The maple stood silently by. The phoebe under the rafter remained in her nest. The raccoon walking the shoreline paused, but offered no help.
        Still the screaming . . .Still the darkness . . . Sitting upright with a cotton sheet wrapped around my waste, I scanned the midnight for the animal under attack. Like the maple tree, phoebe, and raccoon, I merely waited. Perhaps I just wanted to see it. . .see the face of death before the mask becomes my own.
        Then I heard it. We all did. The SNAP. The crack of the spinal cord . . .a POP like resin bursting in a hot fire. Jaws closing . . . screams ending . . .silence returning.
       Only the low, rhythmic, growl of the predator remained.
       Something personal in the growl.
       Awful and lasting.
       In the mash of bone I heard wilderness. Not beauty, not integrity, but an arrangement whereby life emerged out of death. Familiarity was my only shield against this terrible truth: a thin vale obscuring the insanity.
       The phoebe settled back down on her eggs, the raccoon continued its beachcombing, and the maple stood strong and still.
        I wiped my eyes, fell back asleep, and never saw partner or her kits again.