“Hello??” Bang bang bang.
I recognize my upstairs neighbor’s baritone with its dramatic flourish, “Hel-OOO??!”
Here’s what I know about my upstairs neighbor: he writes poetry, he has a pet bird that he frequently shouts at to “Shut up! Shut UP!!” He spends a great deal of time out on his back porch, directly above mine. He appears to be about 70 years old, with an entirely bald head and dresses in sandals and button down shirts from the Frank Costanza cabana wear collection. I sometimes wonder if my cats and I are going to get contact high from the clouds of earthy pot smoke that waft in through my open windows and from the hallway. His musical tastes run from The Little Mermaid soundtrack to Donna Summer.
I open the door a crack, trying to keep Odin and Andromeda from darting out into the hallway and leading me on a chase up and down stairs to retrieve them.
“Oh, hi!,” he drags out key words like he’s doing an impression of Joan Collins. “Listen, I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be banging around upstairs for a bit because there is a squirrel in my apartment.”
“A squirrel?” I wonder for a minute if I’m still dreaming.
“Yes, I had my screen door open yesterday and this squirrel just ran right into my dining room from outside! Well, I tried calling the City and they said they’d send someone but that was yesterday and of course they haven’t done a goddamn thing. So I called our management company and they sent someone over, and I thought I heard it run out the door so I sent him away. Well then this morning, I walked into the dining room and I heard this grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.” he makes a low growl that I’ve never in my life heard come out of a squirrel. “So, he’s still in there!”
I think I get it now. “OK”, I say as cheerily as one can when one has been roused from sleep by cats and strange neighbors. “No problem, thanks – “
But now he’s launched into scolding. “Do not keep food on your back porch. If you keep any food out there it attracts animals. That’s why I had this squirrel run into my apartment."
This kind of pisses me off. I don’t keep food out on my porch – why would I? “OK, I don’t keep food out there, but thanks.”
“You shouldn’t because it attracts all kinds of critters.”
“OK, I won’t,” I say, guiltily remembering the night I put out a dish for a sweet stray cat that followed me up from the laundry room and the 2-3 times I’ve put my trash bag out on the porch overnight so it won’t fester in my kitchen overnight.
I have never seen evidence of squirrels in the garbage. I’ve never even seen a squirrel on the back porches. Not that it would be surprising, we live right at tree level on a street lined with old sugar maples and oaks.
This also isn’t the first time I’ve gotten a dubious lecture from Mr. Upstairs. He came down one day after I lit my charcoal grill and claimed that the smoke was flooding into his apartment and that if I followed his technique where you light just four coals, let them get ashy and then pile up the rest of the coals around them, there will be no smoke at all.
I didn’t point out to him that what he was proposing would make twice the ignition smoke and take twice as long, just like I don’t point out to him now that the reason the squirrel ran into his apartment is because he had his back door wide open.
I agree through clenched teeth, and my neighbor, satisfied by my promise, goes upstairs and bangs around. Presumably the squirrel gets the message, I didn’t hear anything else about it all weekend.
Tonight, I came home from the office, and pulled the trash out of the can. I put it outside on the porch quietly, remembering the dire warnings I received last week. “Whatever, dude.” I think to myself.
Shutting the back door, I notice that one of the jars on my kitchen windowsill has been pushed almost to the edge. Cats must have been up here. I move it back into place, and come face to face with a black, eager little eye.
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| This isn't THE squirrel, just A squirrel. A cute squirrel. |
Laughing, I retrieve the trash bag from my porch. Point: upstairs neighbor.
The little squirrel comes right back. Even now, he’s curled up, sleeping adorably on the outside ledge of my kitchen window with his tail wrapped around the top of his body. Part of me wonders if he has rabies. Part of me wonders if he was a pet or something – am I just imagining the longing on his face as he peers into my kitchen? Part of me wonders if maybe…he’s a little hungry. I think of the almonds in my cupboard.
Anthromorphizing animals and other objects is an old, old habit of mine. When I was in Kindergarten, I wrote and illustrated my first book, “Little Ed Under the Bed” about a little girl who brings all of her stuffed animals into the bed to sleep with her, but forgets all about Little Ed under the bed. She’s wracked with guilt when she finds him the next morning and promises to never leave him down there again.
And so I keep checking on little Ed out there on the window. Wondering if he’ll be gone in the morning.
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