Happy October. I think I might be living in a Steven King novel. Okay, maybe not a novel. My brush with the fabled and supernatural was very much contained to a 20 hour episode, but I find it incredibly curious that at the onset of Spooky Season and hot on the heels of a conversation about King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, I would have a brush with a creature that belongs in that world of horror.
Or in a world where AI’s hallucinations come to life. Don’t worry; this story has a happy ending (see the cute photo of the healthy squirrel up top). No critters or writers were harmed. So let’s start at the beginning.
On Monday afternoon, I was at the dentist, waiting on my kiddos, when my husband sent a text on the family thread. A picture with the caption, “I’m so confused.”
My sister texted back, “Squirrel bacchanal?” Okay, that’s not exactly what she texted, but I know enough about search engine optimization not to type exactly what she said.
I opened my text thread a found the following picture:
What the actual heck? Ew. Ew. I don’t even. No. Being at the dentist is bad enough, even when you are just the mama in the waiting room. I did not need to get into whatever Mother Nature and those squirrels were doing.
Another text came in from my husband.
“I don’t want to get any closer and scare them, but from a distance it looks like the bottom group of squirrels all have their tails tangled up in a branch.”
“Oh dear. That’s sad.” My sister texted.
My thoughts exactly. Another text came in from Mr. Trent.
“There are like seven of them there, and they are attempting to climb back up the tree.”
I closed my phone, feeling slightly queasy. A seven headed clump of squirrel is not a pleasant image to ponder while seated next to a fish tank at a dentist office. I know fish tanks are supposed to be soothing for people, but all my associations with them are under duress. Pediatrician’s offices. Chaperoning fifth grade field trips. Dentist’s offices. The foyer of that one preschool that we only attended for two days. Shudder.
We finished up (but we will be back soon because cavities!) and drove home. Mr. Trent was in the driveway when I pulled up, arms crossed, staring at the ash tree in our front yard… and the multi-headed mass of squirrels.
We found out later via google searches that these tangled squirrels were not congenitally joined, but a litter of kits whose tails had gotten tangled in the nest material and tree sap. This rare phenomenon is called a “squirrel king” and according to our research is fatal without human intervention.
There is a visceral reaction to seeing life suffer. It’s not good. For me it was an unpleasant mix of fear and nausea. Disgust and dread. Exactly the emotions I experience when reading horror. I really don’t enjoy these emotions. I’m extremely squeamish and selective when it comes to spooky content.
“Are they tangled up in fishing line?” I asked as this clump of squirrels tried and failed to scurry up the tree. We live close to a reservoir that is a popular fishing hole. Wildlife can get easily tangled up in lines. Ask me how I know.
“I don’t think so,” Mr. Trent said.
“What do we do?” my daughter asked.
My son looked close to tears. “Are they going to die?”
“I don’t know. Go inside. Don’t let the cat out.” Maybe nature would some how miraculously fix this problem? Maybe the mama squirrel, who was chattering and scurrying up and down the tree, would chew through the branches that were tangled around the juveniles?
No one had much of an appetite for dinner. All of us kept checking on the squirrels from our front window as we tried to figure out what to do. Nature and mama squirrel seemed to be at a loss.
I’m not a botanist. I’m not a vigilante conservationist. I wasn’t about to attempt to untangle a mass of angry squirrels, but I am a mama, and it is really easy to empathize with the plight of other mamas–even if they are squirrels. It was around this time that I started swearing and asking why the exceedingly rare squirrel king had to occur in our front yard. After 5 PM.
“You want me to call someone?” Mr. Trent asked.
“Yes.” I said. But it was after 5. Everyone was closed. Mr. Trent had no luck.
I grabbed my phone and started texting anyone I could think of, asking for help and advice. I started making phone calls and leaving messages. Asking for help (“Would you like to phone a friend?” to quote Regis Philbin) is a skillset that comes in handy–even if it’s learned late in life. I learned that wildlife is not under the jurisdiction of animal control. I learned that police officers, who do work after 5, also are not equipped to handle wildlife. We called animal shelters. I called pest control companies. At one point I posted on Nextdoor. My neighbor Kelly, God bless her, found Greenwood Wildlife and sent me their website. They were closed, but I left messages.
An hour or so later, as the sun was setting, I got a call from some kind soul at a shelter. “Put them in a box. Take them to a wildlife center in the morning. They will die of exhaustion trying to climb up the tree if left on their own all night.”
The last thing I wanted was to have a clump of dead squirrels in my yard in the morning. And the very last thing I wanted was for my kiddos to see their parents shrug when someone needed help and they could do something about it. Powerless in the face of the scary is not a message I want internalized.
Off we went to Lowes to pick up a large, reinforced cardboard box. Mr. Trent and I donned layers and gloves. It was properly dark when we got back. There was no sign of the mama squirrel, but the squirrel king was still huddled at the base of our tree. We got them into the box–turns out there were five juvenile squirrels and not seven like we estimated. We debated about food and water, putting it in only to pull it out per the Greenwood Wildlife center’s website instructions, and made a plan to drop the squirrel king off in the morning after school runs were completed.
When we dropped off the squirrels, we were told that most likely the center would know in the next 24 to 48 hours what the prognosis was. If any of the squirrels’ tails were broken they’d need to be euthanized as tails are essential for survival providing balance and warmth. They said in these situations squirrels often have to be sedated before they can be untangled. They asked if we were willing to return in a week or two to bring the squirrels back to our house as releases are most successful when they can be in the same area. We said absolutely and drove home hoping for the best.
An extra hour of driving was a small price to pay for having the squirrel king in the capable hands of Greenwood Wildlife.
We got home and got back to work. Forty-five minutes later I get a call with good news. All five of the juvenile squirrels had been untangled. None of their tails broke in the process. They said there was a lot of horse hair and brambles and flipping and untangling “much like you would necklaces.” So would I mind jumping back in the car and picking up the little critters and bringing them home to their ash tree and mama?
“Are you kidding? A happy ending? I’m there!” I told them.
I relayed the good news to Mr. Trent; we were both extremely invested in the squirrel king at this point. We got in our minivan and drove back up to Lyons. On the drive up we decided to name the squirrels and their mama after the characters in The Thursday Murder Club: Joyce, Elizabeth, Don, Ibrahim, Chris and Donna. We figure Donna is the mama squirrel.
We were greeted with a, “Hey Mom and Dad! You ready for your babies?”
Yes, but how on earth had they managed to untangle the squirrels? They told us that they covered the squirrels up, with only their tails exposed and had a ratio of one human for every squirrel and were holding them on a table like a pinwheel. And then they had an extra human, their small mammal expert, pulling out the debris and directing the process. Here is a link to their IG post with adorable pictures all about it. They gave us a kennel filled with the five separate juvenile squirrels and told us to release the Thursday Murder Club near the ash tree.
We drove back home, and I realized that chauffeur is a big part of my parental job description _even_ for squirrels.
Releasing the squirrels was a little anticlimactic. We thought they’d bound back up the tree as soon as the gate of their kennel was open, but no. Eventually they got up there. And we’ve been enjoying Thursday Murder Club sightings ever since.
It took some encouragement to get the poor dears back in the tree, but they got there. See the photo below of Joyce and Elizabeth in the tree.
Sometimes challenges in our lives are opportunities to live our values. I’m a compassionate person, and I got to embrace my value of compassion with these squirrels. But I’ve also been thinking about something my sister told me awhile ago. She said one of the most important things an English teacher can teach her students is how to use metaphors to find meaning and explore experiences. In a week that has been full of things going sideways, I’ve discovered that there are quite a few instances of metaphorical squirrel kings in my life. And I get to rest assured that I am a person that does something about squirrel kings–both the literal and metaphorical kind.
What metaphors help you get through a bear of a week and have you ever heard of squirrel kings?