My day with 'Demon Child' and Psycho the squirrel

November is a month of violence, as I found out today in what I thought would be an uneventful Sunday morning feeding of the squirrels in the park. But that was before I met ‘demon child’ and got mugged.

All most people know about November violence: the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder plot, comes from the film V for Vendetta. In much the same way the movie 300 is the leading white supremacist able-bodied self-worship film since Birth of Nations (a film which was prescreened in the White House and to the (all white) Supreme Court with great acclaim); the film V for Vendetta posits torture and anarchy as tools of growth. V for Vendetta passes off the idea the torture can be a wonderful, liberating experience which helps a person learn so much about themselves. It also makes revenge into romance. Let me tell you what torture is: go immediately and find a pipe wrench. Now go outside and find yourself a nice friendly dog. Take the pipe wrench and knock the dog down. With alternating left and right handed full extention over-the-head dropping blows lay into the ribs of the dog until you can hear the sharp, crisp snap of shattering rib bones. Now stop, breath deeply and look down at the dog. Do you see the terror in the rolling eyes, the sheen that comes from the pain and unknowning? Think of the dog as a metaphor for the human brain after torture. Does that look very liberating? (I am a little....sensitive about this particular subject)

Now where were we....ah yes, revenge. You want to know what revenge feels like? Find yourself a.....ahhhh, on reflection it might be best if we headed back to the park and this Sunday morn. I woke to a sunny Sunday noon (nothing like tempting fate by saying Saturday eve, “well, nothing can be worse than LAST night”) with the feeling that I had been used during the night as a landing pad during a monster truck rally. Linda later confided that she didn’t think I would be able to make it out the door; but I was fixated on using my wheelchair handcycle on this last sunny day.

Our park is rather unique in that we don’t just have your usual assortment of swarming hungry ducks, swooping crows and squirrels obsessed with burying nuts for winter. No, there is also a small zoo and petting farm which has a flock of peacocks who are easily bored, fly over the fence and then wander about seeing what kind of stuff they can bum from passers by. For some reason, either their broody walk, or their pack-like behavior, they peacocks remind me of a bunch of teenagers; the kind whose interest in you quickly disappears after your wallet is sucked dry. Last time we came to the park, I was surrounded by the teenage pack…I mean peacock pack who wanted to be feed. Being peacocks, they don’t take the shelled peanuts I have brought for the squirrels, oh no, they want me to shell the peanuts for them. How very peacock. So I am furiously shelling peanuts while peacocks are occasionally pecking at me to say, “A little faster please…and last time there was a bit of peanut skin still on my piece, can you make sure that doesn’t happen again!”

And I suddenly try to remember that I am supposedly the dominant species here and if I want to feed squirrels, I will. Well, that didn’t actually work out as well as I hoped because while I did start feeding squirrels, the peacocks didn’t leave and a flock of crows AND ducks arrived which made the whole place like a FOX TV show of “When Nature ATTACKS!” It is pretty surreal watching squirrels leaping several feet in the air to fight with peacocks in mid-flight. Or watch a squirrel and crow on the ground wrestling over a peanut. Kind of kills the whole fuzzy warm, “Aren’t I helping the animals” feeling.

Today, Sunday, I ran simultanously into an exquisitely vain peacock (and for peacocks, that’s saying a lot), and “demon child.” There was a boy about 7 or 8 standing next to his brother and I was thinking about offering his parents some peanuts so the kids could feed the squirrels when the parents asked him what he wanted to do. He stood there clutching this fallen tree branch taller than himself and said, “I wanna fight!” He was trying to convince his parents if they could find his brother a fallen branch then the two of them could wack at each other’s head. The thought of offering peanuts died as I had a good idea what would happen to any squirrel he enticed within range of the tree branch.

I wheeled past them and was talking to a park worker because the sign said, “No bicycles.” I was explaining that this was more of an off-road wheelchair when I hear these cries of a mother, “No, Thomas!” in the tone which is used for when your child has just run to the front of the church during service and drunk all the sacred wine. Turns out Demon-Child (Thomas) has decided that the tree branch is just right for shoving between my wheel spokes in an attempt to upturn the wheelchair. I, of course, try to continue conversing with the park worker (What does one do in this situation? The "Welcome to Crip world" pamphlet didn't cover this?) who tells me it is “no problem” while I watch out of the corner of my eye how the mother has wrestled Demon Child back, clearing my wheels. But (as they always do) Demon Child escapes and has currently planted his tree branch firmly into my spokes. He is shoving as hard as an 8 year old can, trying to get me to wheel forward a bit because (you can see in his face) that he is convinced that with branch in spokes the hand-cycle will flip completely over and to his mind that is just going to be DELICIOUS to watch.

Of course, by this time, his mother has reached a voice octave that is probably making bats fall from the sky because it seems that trying to flip over wheelchair cycles on top of their female occupants is not something her little boy should do. Or rather is it something very much her Demon-Child would do and with the desperate look of a woman who has been threatened with one too many lawsuits she drags him back.

This is a good time to move on and by now the peacock, feeling IT hasn’t gotten enough attention is preening itself all over the place. I actually shell a few peanuts and feed it on the basis that anything THAT vain which has still managed to stay alive is sort of a wild child too dim to look after itself.

The squirrels are being all cute and squirrelish with that extra dollop of fall/winter desperation thrown in. There is a pile of loose dirt where the Friday crew have emptied a hole to put in a tree in Monday. One squirrel takes every peanut we give him and buries it in, what to a squirrel, must be the most amazing loose dirt and perfect place to hide peanuts. This is going to be one disappointed squirrel next week. We actually have so many squirrels coming and going (about 10 to 12) that we become a tourist attraction and soon there is a bank of people taking pictures of us feeding the squirrels.

The two types of squirrels in the park are black and grey and the black squirrels are by far the more aggressive; we tend to call them the Godfather (or the Mob) because they are totally fearless. Several times one climbed up Linda’s leg, waist and arm as she was taking pics of me and tried to carry off her camera (I guess it had a peanut smell; or they know a good fence for cameras).

It actually became a little bit like combat because we had SO many squirrels coming at us simultaneously; with Linda calling out, “Grey at your 12 o’clock; incoming black at 3 o’clock.” There was one particular black squirrel who after a few feedings was simply unbelievable: he just ran straight at you, coming without a waver for 30 or 40 feet and then, leapt right onto you without hesitation. But this wasn’t a “oh, here I am your loving animal friend” leaping on to you. No it was more of a “Gimme! Now, and don’t forget I got friends and know where you live” encounter.

I call this squirrel Psycho, simply because if we come back in the spring and all the other squirrels are found murdered in their little tree holes, I won’t have to wonder who did it (this is one squirrel who is going to survive!). So, little Psycho, unlike other squirrels who occasionally crept up my leg or up the wheel would just sort of do a full running leap into my lap. I am impressed and give him a peanut.

Does Psycho give up? Not even close. He wants more; he DEMANDS more. See, there is where I get sucked into talking to animals. Why? Because I am clearly about 200 times larger than this squirrel who I HAVE ALREADY FED, and he is taking me on? So I tell him, “Dude, you ALREADY have a peanut, it’s in your mouth!” He gives me the “Oh, you ARE going to give me more peanuts, and now!” stare.

I sort of come to myself (Hello, I am a Ph.D. and now I am arguing with a squirrel?) and try to laugh it off. The squirrel does not. I’d like to say he got a demented look in his eye but the fact is that everything he did seemed incredibly deliberate. I think I was up against some sort of squirrel genius when he suddenly figured out that ALL THE PEANUTS COME FROM THE GREY BAG! In a move that would have made him an eternal legend in the land of squirrel, he leaps over to my other leg, with the original peanut I fed him still in his mouth, and tries to take off with the ENTIRE BAG of 50+ peanuts. You can actually see him trying to wrestle it away from me. Mugged by a squirrel.

Anyway, while I am a very feeble human being who twitches and can’t hold cups and utensils and stuff, there was no way I was going to let our species down when it came to the eternal human v. squirrel dominance fight. You will be happy to know that after I held the bag out of his reach (he leapt over to that arm too, leaving a nice decoration of landing claw marks), I finally convinced him that feeble female human is STILL stronger than 12 oz. squirrel, even one named Psycho. And off he went. I’d like to say that he was too scared to return, having felt the dominating presence of Elizabeth but the reality is as soon as he was gone I said to Linda, “I really think this is a good time to find somewhere ELSE to feed the squirrels.” Hey, I just don’t want him to find out where I live.

So that was today’s adventure. I face Demon-Child and Psycho the squirrel and I finish victorious over both. After the uphill ride home I couldn’t hold the Gatorade bottle and Linda got me into bed for a nap. I faded off to sleep with good memories of a sunny November day. Linda asked, “Why do you keep muttering ‘hey buddy, see, my peanuts!’?” Oh, was I saying that out loud?

Like I said, good memories.