A Cautionary Squirrel Tale

Almost two weeks ago a friend and I went out to celebrate the Fourth of July. It wasn’t entirely to celebrate that, we made a date to have dinner since we hadn’t seen each other in a while and we were both free. We went to a quasi-Southern-American restaurant in Covent Garden, our nod to American Independence day. Strangely enough, I think it was their “reopening” night after changing the menu and direction of the place but you wouldn’t have known it based on the atmosphere. Anyhoo, after dinner we decided to walk for a bit since it was such a nice night. We walked from Covent Garden, down to Embankment, along to Westminster, up to St. James’ Park and into Green Park where we caught the Tube and bus. 

In St. James’ Park we walked by some tourists taking pictures of a squirrel sitting on a fence. I asked my friend if she was as enamored of squirrels as the tourists always seem to be. She too grew up with squirrels so we both said they are no big whoop and we expressed surprise with every tourist in every park always wanting to take pictures of the things, or even trying to pet them. Ick.

Whilst in Green Park we came to a point where the paths sort of converge so there’s a round opening. Standing in the middle of the circle was this woman and one squirrel. The squirrel was actually standing on his (or her) two back feet and was trying to get some nuts or something (loose change? Gum? A cigarette?) from the woman. The squirrel was so tame and so accustomed to people it was walking right up to the woman and showing off by lifting up. Somehow I missed something, I must have blinked because the squirrel went from standing right next to woman to crawling up her leg. I immediately started saying “it’s on her leg! It’s on her leg!” and my friend looked over and let out this guttural scream. The woman was just standing there, either in awe or in shock because she did nothing for what felt like a minute. Then she started shaking her leg to get the thing off. The whole time she had this smile on her face and we couldn’t quite tell if it was out of fear or satisfaction. Perhaps she trains squirrels in her free time and this one was showing promise. 

 

My friend and I continued to walk on but we kept looking back because the squirrel was refusing to leave the woman’s side and kept standing on its hind legs. I expected the thing to make another run for her body and scramble all the way up to her face where it would go for her eyeballs or tongue. We really couldn’t figure out whether the woman liked the whole encounter and if her slightly demonic smile said “I come here every day to let squirrels crawl on me.” Or whether the whole thing was a funny and strange (scary?) experience she’ll take back with her to Spain or France, a story no one will really believe leading her to become known as “Squirrel Leg Susan” or something. She wasn’t trying to take pictures of the squirrel, so she was unlike the other tourists, but she also refused to run away in terror after the thing attached itself to her like I (or most other people) would have done. I’m not scared of squirrels but I draw the line at letting them jump on me. They are, after all, the land version of pigeons, only slightly cuter than their rat cousins given their furry, flickering tails. The whole thing was quite strange and honestly made me rethink this whole squirrel in park thing we got going on here. The next time I walk through Green Park I am keeping my head down, my legs moving and most likely carrying a broom with me to brush off any rodent hop-ons looking for a free ride.