The Squirrel

It was supposed to be a relaxing long weekend at Kaisha’s parents’ house. And for the most part it was. They have a twenty-five acre wooded lot with a barn and a woodshed. There’s a ravine running through the woods too. We spent our time watching movies, playing with Toby and Tigger, preparing meals; I played guitar and Kaisha read. The weather was starting to cool and we were both really looking forward to lounging by the wood-burning stove in the basement. It was a lot of fun re-acquainting myself with Kaisha’s family pets. Toby was a little stand-off-ish at first. I didn’t grow up with a dog so I’m not always sure what they’re thinking. He’s a German Shepherd and can be a bit intimidating — despite Kaisha’s insistence that he’s a sweetheart. I believe her, I’m just not sure he does. Tigger on the other hand is a cat. A cute, attention-starved Calico. Her parents were in the Dutch Antilles for two weeks so they appreciated having us there to feed the pets. It was a vacation for us too. Kaisha loves being home. The happiest I see her is when we’re there.

The second day there, we gathered a few loads of wood from the woodshed. I watched Kaisha split two-by-fours into kindling. She examined the stove and by the soot around the vent on the top she determined the draft was coming down the chimney. She had me open the backdoor and she was about to place a piece of burning paper into the pipe in order to start an updraft, but when she opened the top and threw the match in, we heard some rustling. “Oh god! There’s a bird in there!” she piped. The paper in her hand started to burn down and she wasn’t sure what to do. “The laundry tub!” I offered, then immediately remembered that it was upstairs off the kitchen. She had already started for the stairs but wisps of burning paper were falling to the floor. She ran back to the stove and threw it on the stone pad. Both relieved, we made sure all the bits were extinguished. We peered into the stove and saw a squirrel crouched in the corner. I kept my distance in case the thing might spring for freedom. Kaisha had a pet squirrel when she was younger, but I’ve never been a big fan. They always seem to be around and sometimes they get a little too close for my taste. In the back of my mind, I worry that any non-domesticated animal is potentially rabid. I heard an episode of This American Life once about a rabid raccoon that attacked a woman. She fell down while running away and the animal clamped on to her leg. Somehow she managed to restrain it by rolling a heavy log over it. Help eventually came but the raccoon was relentless in its attack. After beating the animal on the head with a tire iron to no avail, a kitchen knife was finally used to kill it. Ira Glass commented how researchers still refer to the disease as “diabolical.” I was pretty sure that this wasn’t a rabid squirrel but I was still a bit nervous.

Kaisha went upstairs and started gathering ski gloves, old rags and a burlap bag. “You’re getting it out,” she demanded. I threw up my hands in protest. “No way,” I countered. ‘She was the veterinary technician; I, a simple city kid with no experience handling woodland animals,’ went my reasoning. “Don’t be such a baby,” she half-heartedly muttered, but I could tell she was nervous about grabbing a frightened squirrel too. Finally we decided to leave the top of the stove open and clear a path to the back door in the kitchen. We waited for a while but nothing was happening. Kaisha thought that throwing in another match might prompt it to come out and I agreed. But even before she lit it, we heard the squirrel scampering up the stove pipe. It seemed to be stopped near the flu but we couldn’t tell for sure. We were at a loss for what to do next so we decided to just leave it be for a while. I went upstairs and played guitar while Kaisha fixed a snack. I made up a country song called “Squirrel in the Woodstove” with an alternating bass rhythm. I couldn’t think of any more lyrics other than “there’s a squirrel in the woodstove” and Kaisha was getting annoyed so I stopped. We sat and had a tea in the kitchen and kind of chuckled about the whole situation. After about an hour we decided to check it out again. We stood very quietly near the stove pipe and listened for any sounds but heard none. We looked at each other and shrugged. We figured it had probably climbed out the chimney and so, again, began to create an updraft. Kaisha placed the burning paper in the pipe and I opened the back door. We figured the smoke from the paper would force it out if it was still in the chimney anyway. Kaisha constructed a tee-pee of kindling and paper and started the fire. It took a while to catch but eventually we heard the tell-tale crackling.

The fire was going strong and so we settled in to watch some movies and enjoy the warmth. After a couple of DVDs I went upstairs to start dinner and Kaisha went to tend to the fire. A moment later I heard her yell and ran to the stairs. “The squirrel fell in! Get it out!” she cried. I ran to the stove and saw the squirrel crouched as far from the raging fire as it could get. “Get some water,” I shouted. Kaisha ran for the kitchen while I just stood tensely staring into the stove, not knowing what to do. All I could see was the squirrel, squinting from the heat. He tried frantically burrowing into the layer of ashes on the bottom of the stove. His tail was singed and thick and not what I expected it to look like under the circumstances. Kaisha finally came down with a painfully small saucepan, spilling some of the water as she hurried. She dumped it onto the flames but it had no chance against the fire. The sizzling sound only reinforced how blazing hot it was in the stove. She ran to refill the pot while I continued to stare helplessly. I thought how excruciatingly hot the surface of the stove must be as the animal pressed itself against side to keep away from the flames. I felt like crying as I saw it continue to burrow then finally, unbelievably, leap to the other side of the stove onto the flames. Kaisha finally returned with a larger pot and dumped it directly onto the squirrel but it had already stopped moving. I felt mild relief at the site of the still animal then a wave of nausea came over me. “Get it out of there,” Kaisha calmly ordered. I wasn’t positive it was dead so I tried to move it off the flames with the poker. The lifeless squirrel simply slumped from the log it was resting on. I looked at Kaisha not sure what to do. I didn’t want to damage the body trying to move it. Feeling horribly responsible for this, I wanted to at least offer a small expression of respect for the squirrel’s life by not damaging the corpse.

“I suppose we could just leave it,” Kaisha suggested. I quickly nodded my agreement. I took one last look at the squirrel and placed the heavy lid back on the stove. We both exhaled deeply and looked at each other. “Holy shit,” I stated blandly while staring at nothing in particular. “Ya,” Kaisha agreed. I think I repeated it five or six more times before I caught myself. Finally, I remembered that I had started making dinner. “Should we eat supper?” I asked. “I’m not hungry anymore,” she sighed. I realized that I wasn’t hungry either. “Do you want a drink?” I tried. “Yes,” she answered decidedly. We slowly walked upstairs to the kitchen. I poured her a glass of wine and I opened a beer for myself. I took a long swig then started to say something but stopped. There were no words I could think of that adequately expressed how I felt. There was nothing to say. We killed a squirrel by burning it alive.

After a few minutes in the kitchen, the sheer freakishness of the situation started to set in. I tried to supress a smile but it crept over my face all the same. I felt awful for thinking this could be considered funny but Kaisha reluctantly laughed too. “Is it wrong that we’re going to enjoy the fire now?” she asked. It dawned on me that we would, in fact, sit and enjoy the warmth from the stove after all this. What could we do? It seemed pointless to avoid the basement and even more pointless to extinguish the fire (we had to make sure the body was properly disposed of, after all). So we did. We went back downstairs, put on another movie and slumped into the couch.

The rest of the weekend was pretty quiet. After talking on the phone with her parents, Kaisha reassured me that it was probably for the best. If we hadn’t lit the fire, the squirrel probably would’ve died in the chimney. Weeks later her parents could’ve lit the stove and caused a chimney fire (which isn’t unheard of). But still I felt awful. “I could have put on ski gloves and grabbed the stupid thing and thrown it in the bag,” I protested. “We could have got it out.” We could’ve but we didn’t. That’s what Kaisha kept saying gently to me that night in bed. “The next time a squirrel gets caught in the woodstove, we’ll know what to do,” she reasoned. It didn’t make me feel any better. As I closed my eyes, all I could see was the squirrel crouching against the edge of the woodstove, squinting, burrowing desperately to get away from the heat.