The evil mutant attack squirrel of death

Blogging from Bruce
Vonda Keon
September 22, 2008

I ran across a story of a motorcyclist in South Mississippi that had a really bad encounter with an angry squirrel. It made me laugh so hard because I started remembering my own encounter with a Mutant Attack Squirrel.

I opened a pre-school on North McSweyn in 1997. Four days a week, I taught ABC’s and 123’s and computer skills and read stories and sang songs with 3 and 4 year olds for a couple of hours each day. We had so much fun finger painting and doing puzzles and playing dress up and of course going outside and playing games.

I always taught things about nature, how to identify trees and flowers and good bugs and bad bugs. We looked for snakes, mainly to avoid them, and watched for turtles in the creek. Then there were the many squirrels that roamed freely in the yard between Mom’s pecan orchard and the little house that was my preschool.

At that time I drove a Chevy van that held maybe 9 kids max. I didn’t drive them around so space wasn’t an issue. Until the day that the Mutant Attack Squirrel of Death appeared.

I had the little ones outside and we were marching and singing at the top of our lungs trying to shake the sillies out when Matthew noticed a baby squirrel just sitting on the ground by the redbud tree in the front yard. We all got very quiet and slowly approached the little gray furry creature and it just looked at us with its little beady eyes. It didn’t hardly have any fluff on its tail it was so young. I told the children to stand back as I searched all over for its mama. The kids looked below the trees and bushes and I looked high into the trees. Nope, no mama, but the neighbor’s cat had spied the baby and had that lean and hungry look in its eyes. I knew that little squirrel was about to become lunch for that cat and I sure didn’t want the kids to witness that carnage.

I went over to the little squirrel and talked to it in soothing tones and gently picked it up and put it up into the tree. It still looked at me with those little beady eyes. Then it threw its head back, stood up on its little teeny hind legs, opened its little mouth and screamed what I am pretty sure was squirrel for “ BANZAI! You pecan loving, heathen!” The sound that escaped from that tiny little creature was amazing. But then I heard the same scream and a crashing noise that sounded like a miniature herd of elephants coming out of the giant oak across the street.

We all turned around and observed what was apparently the mama squirrel, coming toward us. Except this was no ordinary squirrel. This was the Crazed Evil Mutant Attack Squirrel of Death. The leap that squirrel executed was something that an Olympian would be proud of. It would have pulled 10’s straight across the board. Snarling, hissing and chattering loudly, the little furry tornado came running across the busy street only to run under a car. I just knew that squirrel was a Frisbee at that point. But noooo.

When that car drove on, there she was, hunkered down on the street. She was now the
Crazed Evil Mutant Nazi Attack Squirrel of Death and she was on a mission. She ran toward my legs and proceeded to run in circles up my legs. I yelled at the kids to run and get into the van. All 15 kids obeyed! They ran as fast as their little 3 and 4 year old legs would carry them and packed into the van while I was doing the Mexican hat dance in the yard trying to get that screaming banshee of a squirrel off my body. She was like a Tasmanian Devil. I was screaming, the crazy squirrel was screaming, the baby squirrel was still screaming and the kids were in the can screaming!

I grabbed the squirrel by it’s fluffy tail and did a couple of swings round my head and turned loose and she went sailing across the yard only to land on her feet and she was REALLY mad at me then. By this time, I realized that I needed to get into the van with the kids or they were going to witness me being eaten alive by that Wicked, Vile Crazed Evil Mutant Nazi Attack Squirrel of Death. I sprinted for the van only to find the children had locked the doors. So there I was, locked out of the van that was packed full of screaming preschoolers, with a dangerous squirrel running at me intent on shredding me.

I finally convinced the children to open the door and let me in. That squirrel jumped on the windshield of the van and shook its little fists at me. Then she jumped off the van, climbed the redbud tree, grabbed her baby by the nape of its neck and dragged it back across the street and up into the large oak tree. I tried to get out of the van after a while and she ran back down the tree and chattered at me. So there the kids and I sat for a while. Matthew finally said from somewhere in the back of the van, that next time we should just let the cat eat the squirrel.

I totally agreed.