I nearly posted this story in the comments here but realized at the last moment that it had nothing to do with the internet, besides the fact that I shall now tell said story on the internet, and refrained because we don’t want to look like a corny old guy on someone else’s weblog do we.
I was visiting a friend back in the days when nearly everything happened exclusively in real life. I was visiting a friend, in fact staying at his house for an extended period. I won’t say that he left me to my own devices a great deal, but I did spend a fair amount of time watching his pet squirrel run in the wheel mounted in its cage. It was a rather small cage, and being a squirrel the animal had lots of energy, and spent a lot of time running in its wheel, and I spent a lot of time watching it – being a lazy human I had less energy, at least relatively so; or perhaps merely more indolence.
One day my squirrel-watching was interrupted by a blonde woman who, well, not “burst,” and not “barged” … who “entered the room with a certain dramatic flair” and announced to everyone there (at this point I had reached a stage where I watched the squirrel closely even when other, potential conversation-partner types were in the room) and announced, “Boy do I ever hate American men.”
I sort of looked up, then went back to my squirrel-watching, thinking, “it’s you and me, little buddy.”
I also thought, “wonder if all Austrian women are like this.” (I should interject at this point that this took place in Austria, you see, a stone’s throw from where we now live. Well, a bit further. How far is a stone’s throw… fifty meters would be a good toss, wouldn’t it? Depending on stone and wind conditions? More like thirty stone’s throws from where we now live, but by car it takes just a couple minutes, it’s very near. But it was a long, roundabout story between that meeting and moving into the house where we now live.)
And that’s how we met.
The squirrel’s cage squeaked, faintly but constantly.
That was beautiful, mig… (sniff). If only I could torture a squirrel like that too
At the time, it was my impression that the squirrel enjoyed both running in its little wheel, and its steady diet of nut-like things. It did appear to be smiling. But today at lunchtime, standing at the urinal, I had a similar thought. Why didn’t it occur to me to set the squirrel loose? Under what circumstances had it been caged? Would it have been able to survive in the “wild” or had it been hopelessly corrupted by “domesticity” like those depraved orangutans you sometimes see, smoking cigarettes where the jungle meets the city?
Then I remembered the little thing died not long after this story took place.
Yeah, you would definitely have looked like a corny old guy if you’d posted that.
Free the squirrels, I say.