Ambushed by a Bushytail

The week started well for Rumor, the 5-year-old German shepherd anointed on Feb. 13 by the American Kennel Club as Westminster's Best in Show. Shepherds, known for their beauty, their heart, their loyalty -- and now their sense of chic, since this honor also fell during New York Fashion Week -- are also stalwart symbols of the Long Leash of the Law. As the K9 officers who serve beside them will attest, it takes a lot of work to best a German shepherd, especially in the field of law enforcement.

Until now.

Enter Joey, all 2 pounds of him - and all squirrel.

Or let us say: enter Joey but break-and-enter a teenaged would-be burglar who found his way inside the home of Adam and Carmen Pearl in Meriden, Idaho. Joey apparently had been resting, as he often does, in his favorite hammock when the interloper loped in with serious theft on his mind.

Born to gather and cache nuts as his birthright and his privilege, Joey appears to equally respect and defend the right of Mr. and Mrs. Pearl to do the same -- whatever nuts may be of their choosing. And so the young fox squirrel sprang into action to defend his family's nut stash. He became airborne with such polished aim as to land directly on the burglar as the teen tried to crack - well, not a nut, but the family's safe.

Local media accounts say the acrobatic feat was sufficient to scare the miscreant off. The young suspect was later tracked down - though media reports don't say whether the arresting officers were humans or whether they called in their own German shepherds to sniff the suspect out.

Or perhaps this was a case for Secret Squirrel, Hanna Barbera's trenchcoat-clad sleuth?

This surely would have made one fine episode for that Sixties-era rodent spy. And this time the spotlight would have been only for Joey, the Pearl family's six-month-old backyard rescue -- anointed Best in Show after all.

Requiem

Sometimes on a bad morning, before I have a chance to remember, I still look for him. There in the rush of gray that greets me with its collective demand for pecans and walnuts, I wait for the eager, open face and the familiar drag of the crimped right front paw.

Ghastly as it was at first, the injury never seemed to hold the same significance for him as it did for me. In fact, few things stopped this squirrel in the year we shared beginning last spring, when he first showed up outside my sliding glass door. As-yet uninjured and enduringly photogenic, he captured me with his robust personality and the steadiness of his routine. Barely a month into our friendship, an encounter with a mystery predator left his right front paw permanently mangled and, for a time, infected and horrifically swollen. He kept his morning appointments and would sometimes add an afternoon encore. But he made it clear he wanted only my food, not my sympathy and most certainly not my help.

Then barely a week later, a new assault, one that left his richly bushed tail reduced to a half-torn flag waving in not-quite-surrender. The encounter had left the tail's disconnected remnant beneath a nestbox he'd called home for a short while in one of our maples. I scooped up the shard, placing it for safekeeping in a plastic bag, and sealed it.

I must have believed at the time this was how I could keep this independent spirit close forever.

And nothing slowed or stopped him. Not the blasting heat of that summer, not the subsequent superstorm of autumn, and not the battering of winter blizzards that escorted the arrival of 2013. As spring marked our full year of feedings and greetings, his wildness was softened slightly by his boldness: He would hang on the screen door, tap on the glass for me, or simply sit and stare in each morning – and wait. If he did not look for me, I would look for him. Somehow, we would find one another.

But for this tough survivor, it was always at a distance he perceived as safe.

The head wound, when it appeared in late spring, was deceptive. The hair loss accompanying it mirrored the onset of mange, not uncommon among squirrels but not necessarily worrisome. He was, after all, not the only male squirrel sporting such patches, the hallmark of inter-squirrel squirmishes sparked by hormones in spring mating season.

It did not take long for infection to rim his eyes with pus and collect in pockets that altered the sculpture of his head. On a Sunday morning, I presented him with an option and he took it: He stepped into the carrying cage - and into my foolish hope of being able to save him.

The freedom he lost that day was only designed to be short-term. By nightfall, mortality had rewritten that plan. After burying him a day later beneath our tallest evergreen, I locked the sliding glass door and turned my back on that insistent, inexorable parade of gray.

But they have proven to be the unstoppable ones, just as he had always been. Undaunted by a population diminished by one, committed to their own troublesome survival, they will not give up on the hope that their collective demands for food will always be filled. And so in their wisdom and their need to go forward into their lives, they have shown far more grace than I ever could.

It humbles me. I thank them for their patience and for the lesson.

I unlock the door and turn to face them again.

When it ends up in the toilet

It seems that TSS - Toilet Squirrel Syndrome - has reared its watery head once more. If one is to believe the news reports, finding a squirrel in one's toilet is quickly becoming as commonplace as discovering a drippy faucet.

The latest toilet squirrel arrives by way of Canada, where a woman in Winnipeg, alerted by her dogs to a commotion in the commode, lifted the lid to find a drenched creature engaged in an unsuccessful struggle to climb out. Quick-thinking and compassionate, she fished the squirrel out with barbecue tongs, gently and mercifully rinsed him off in her bathtub with a small scoop of water, then set him free.

It is unclear how (or even why) the squirrel ended up a prisoner of the plumbing. Clearly he hadn't been looking for walnuts. This - like all the other toilet squirrels before - remains one of life's mysteries. The woman's concern and presence of mind saved a life (and her careful rinse job hopefully rescued some of the squirrel's dignity as well).

The story was widely covered by various news media, including MSN.com, the Vancouver Sun and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. However, a later news account of this on the CBC website could not leave well enough alone. After relating a somewhat responsible account of the odd sequence of events leading to this highly unusual rescue, CBC chose to create a poll, asking its online readership a most critical, life-altering question: "What would you do if you found a squirrel in your toilet?"

The CBC staff then offered a choice among four pre-selected answers: 1. Get out the BBQ tongs, 2. Rescue it and enjoy my new pet, 3. Free it, 4. Flush!

Clearly Canada's oldest and most respected national broadcast network needs desperately to believe it can be cute, even if it means taking cheap shots at a small, frightened creature.

Fortunately, the little squirrel who'd encountered the kind Winnipeg homeowner managed to be rescued from the depths of the toilet.

The same cannot be said for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.