After an autumn that could not have been more complete and utter shit, my own little stock market seems to be correcting itself.
I'm in my new apartment. Moved in a week ago today. It has a southern exposure, so I get light all day long, and it faces a park, so the cat gets to watch the birds flap around and tweet.
We had a visitor Monday morning -- a small squirrel, who found its way into the small space between my window and crosshatched metal wire that, I assume, is meant to keep birds from nesting and crapping on my windows.
Problem is, the wire is cut open on the left to make room for an air conditioner I don't yet have. So I assume the little guy jumped from the fire escape, which is just a tiny bit across the way, latched himself onto the wire, and crawled in.
He went as far to the right as he could, curled up in a little squirrely ball, and settled in. The little guy was shivering -- probably scared as shit because I was up in its face, looking at it -- and after a while it became very still. So I left it alone for about an hour, thinking maybe it was just kinda freaked out and would find its way out. It didn't. So I took measures. I opened the window a tiny bit -- just enough to get the squirrel moving. I then attempted to talk it out of the pocket and back out into the rest of the world. It didn't follow instructions well, but managed to find its way out of the wire; then, from the ledge, made a crazy leap to the fire escape ladder, which it raced up.
Five minutes later, I'm in the kitchen, washing dishes when, outside the window, the squirrel is hanging upside down from the fire escape ladder staring at me.
This morning, IntenseSquirrel was back. I think it has plans to stay. It started making a little nest in that corner pocket where it was curled up yesterday morning. When I got back from work at 7:30 this evening, it had created a little sloping mound of twigs and dead leaves approximately 8" high and 14" wide.
(I wonder if the squirrel also came from Brooklyn, looking for a new start in La Manzana Grande.)
I'm not sure if I should evict it or let this crazy thing play out. I got some shots of it in action today, including a few hilarious ones of IntenseSquirrel and my cat almost nose-to-nose in the window, very calmly checking each other out. I'll keep a photo diary of the situation as it develops.
Finally, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the author of the ridiculous pirate squirrel photo above. Ms. Kelly Foxton, who has domesticated a squirrel she calls Sugar Bush (apparently, "the world's most photographed squirrel."). She regularly subjects this creature to elaborate photo shoots in which she squeezes the animal into tiny, squirrel-sized costumes and forces it to pose on obscenely detailed sets -- like this one, titled "Nutstradamus: Read My Apoca-Lips!"
I can't imagine any squirrel staying that still in all that shit for that long. I think she has a collection of taxidermied squirrels.
