You may remember that nature tried to eat me about a year ago, and while that might have been a small over-exaggeration, the most recent episode of When Animals Attack (Matt)! just happened for real, because as as we all know, nature finds a way*.

I was minding my own business reading on the patio when Rina yelled at me that there was a weird squirrel running around in circles on the back deck. Certain she was overreacting I yelled back, “It’s probably hungry,” and continued with my book. Then she launched into a narrative about the squirrel’s exact movements in realtime, apparently hoping in vain that I’d detect something in her updates that I’d take seriously.

Rina: “Now he’s staring at us through the glass. He doesn’t seem afraid at all.”

Rina: “He’s getting closer!”

Rina: “I think there’s something wrong with him!”

Rina: “Matt, he’s hanging on the screen now!”

Rina: “I bet he’s got rabies!”

Rina: “Can you look at this? I’m seriously worried.”

Rina: “I don’t want the dog to go out there because it might attack, and I’m not sure who would win…”

Then after a 30 minute break in the excitement I got another update:

Rina: “He’s still hanging in the same place on the screen. I think he’s stuck. This is weird.”

This last bit intrigued me. I mean, why just stay hanging on the screen? I yelled back to tap the glass and he’d probably scurry away. Seconds later she yelled back at me that he tried to attack through the glass and was definitely a weird squirrel.

I finally decided to to take a look to assuage her fears, and when I walked in I was horrified to see the scene above. I’m not sure what I expected given that she’d described it in minutiae, but this thing was staring me down as I looked through the glass. I tapped on the window separating us, and as she’d said when I tapped anywhere near him, he lunged at the tapping like he was going to chew off my hand.

Oddly, I wasn’t sure how to proceed. In my experience, squirrels were suppose to be cute, shy creatures that you could slowly hand a peanut to in a park, not some raving lunatic beast that follows you home, kicks open the door and takes the fucking bag of nuts from your cold, dead corpse.

I’d seen a documentary once that showed how vicious squirrel attacks can be, but I’d assumed he’d see the big, bald monkey and scurry away due to millions of years of natural selection kicking in. This appeared to be no mere squirrel; this was a squirrel that had made a drunken bar bet with his buddies that he was gonna goad me into a fight, and then have my nuts for dessert.

I considered just throwing open the sliding door and taking him head on, because I was fairly sure that:

1) I could preemptively see any counter moves because he probably didn’t understand that glass was two-way and had miscalculated that he could ambush me, and;

2) If I did, there was a fair chance his little paw might get jammed in between the screen door and the glass door giving me the monkey’s advantage.

As I considered the plan, it occurred to me that he might also go all windmill on me and actually win the fight and I’d be forced to retreat while screaming. Thankfully just then Rina gave me an out by saying, “I think you should leave him, he looks sick.”

Relieved, I sniffed as I pulled up my pants up an inch in front and said in my deepest he-man voice, “Well, I wouldn’t want to worry you.”

Next, I looked for any sign that he could be reasoned with. I got a slice of Russian rye bread and went out the front door, then through the side gate and stood next to the wall surrounding our deck. I called Rina on my cell phone and then ripped up the bread and started tossing it over and onto the deck.

Me: “Can you see me throwing bread?”

Rina: “No.”

I threw more chunks over, raining bread down on the deck.

Rina: “Oh, I see it. But he’s not moving. I don’t think he wants it.”

Then I had a stroke of genius. I told Rina to stand by and got the 20-foot rescue pole from the community swimming pool. I started to push it over the wall and once it was about half way over I continued:

Matt: “Hey, look out the door. Do you see a big hook near the door?”

The squirrel was too low to see but I could see the top of the screen door. I maneuvered it closer and then used her excellent direction to close in:

Rina: “Go more. Left. No, your left. Okay, no, your right.”

I finally managed to get close to him, but the squirrel wasn’t intimidated at all. He’d move a few inches out of reach, all the while continuing to give Rina the stink eye through the door.

Defeated, I put the pool hook back and went back inside to consider my next move. The squirrel was just looking in the window at me as if daring me to approach. I decided to try reaching through the little dog door we have, and then grabbing the screen door and shaking it as hard as I could. I also thought I should wear heavy leather gloves, but I couldn’t find them, so Rina offered a pair of the thin, pink rubber gloves she wears when she cleans. I briefly thought about using them, but then decided against it because they offered minimal protection, were too snug, and should the damned thing actually get hold of me and kill me I don’t want the crime scene photos to suggest some weird pink latex fetish.

I sat down near the dog door, slowly reached out, and grabbed the lowest part of the screen and slid it back and forth in the track to see if he moved. He didn’t seem impressed at all, so I shook the door more violently, and he suddenly turned 180 degrees around so he was hanging upside down in the same spot. He obviously wasn’t “stuck” and could move if he wanted to.

Then I had another idea. If I could pop the screen off the track and flip it forward the whole screen would land on him and I could run outside and keep him pinned under it. When I described the plan to Rina she looked at me blankly and simply said, “And then what?”

Since I don’t plan that far in advance I didn’t have much of an answer, but I tried it anyway. As I popped the side closest to me out of the track the screen door shook very violently, and at that moment my antagonist saw an opening and lunged at my hand sticking out of the dog door while screeching hideously. I managed to get my hand back inside before he could bite me, but he’d made a serious attempt on my life. I gave up and closed off the dog door, because I was worried I’d just showed him a way to come in and pick a fight on my turf.

I turned to Rina and we looked at each other the way couples sometimes do, as if reading each others thoughts. We started to speak simultaneously, though I think we both knew it wasn’t necessary.

Rina: “I’m going to call the police.”

Matt: “I could use my high powered laser to light him on fire.”

I could tell by the startled look on her face that we weren’t as aligned on an approach as I’d initially thought.

I responded to her idea saying, “The police are not going to come and get him. They don’t even make handcuffs that small!”

But to be fair my approach had drawbacks as well. For example, what laser folks call incidental reflections could be dangerous because although glass is mostly transparent, some light is reflected off, and it’s a high enough powered laser that even a few percent of the radiation could be hazardous. And also an already angry, half-crazed, flaming rodent could be bad news too.

Rina dialed the police non-emergency line and said, “Hi, yes, we have a squirrel on our deck and we were hoping someone could come and get him.”

Shockingly, a unit was not dispatched code three. The nice person that answered the phone explained that Rina would have to call animal control, so she hung up and called that number only to get a recording that they were closed for the day. She hung up again, and called the police line back and said that animal control wasn’t answering, and that this was now an emergency because our dog could not go outside.

I mentioned loudly that he seemed rabid, and had tried to attack me, feeling like she wasn’t really selling it to the officers. Once she relayed that key piece of information, the police suggested calling a nearby town’s animal control, who they partnered with after hours.

Rina again hung up and called the number and finally got a live person to speak with. She explained the situation, and they declined to come to help because they said they only deal with cats and dogs. Which sounded to me like false advertising if your agency name is “animal control,” but that’s a fight for another day. They cheerfully suggested that we contact a pest removal company, so we started calling around and the only people willing to come out would make us wait until 8:00am by which time we’d probably already be dead at the hands of the maniacal deranged rodent hanging on our back door.

We called a few other animal rescue and pest control companies, all of which were going to make us wait until morning so we finally resigned ourselves to being prisoners in our own house for the evening. They did offer up that it was very unlikely that he had rabies, because they don’t usually get it as they don’t associate with animals that have rabies. They do get the even more horrible sounding roundworm brain parasites which have symptoms that are remarkably similar to rabies.

Just when it was all becoming the new normal, the squirrel decided he’s not done screwing with us. Slowly and deliberately he climbed up to the top of the screen, paused and then began climbing up onto the stucco wall above like Sir Edmund Hillary on Everest. I was skeptical he could go much further because about 2 feet above the door, the building juts out 3 feet or so, and I wasn’t even sure there any way he could stay on the stucco.

Unbelievably, he successfully climbed up far enough that his tail was no longer visible, and I just stood there waiting to see what happened. After a few minutes he either slipped or gave up, and fell onto the deck with a loud thud. I watched to see what he was gonna do, or if he seemed stunned, or perhaps dead. By this time it was pretty dark outside, so I grabbed a flashlight and looked through the door where he was sitting like nothing happened looking directly into the flashlight. I watched him for a few minutes, sighed and gave up and went to bed. Around 1:00am I came back down to and looked outside where I’d last seen him. He hadn’t moved at all.

The next morning, the worst outcome manifested. He was gone. Not gone like dead, gone like missing. I didn’t want to go out looking for him for fear I’d find him, or rather he’d find me. For the next few days we watched for any sign of him and he never reappeared. Maybe he felt he’d proved his point and he was getting little high fives from his squirrel gang. All I know is that it was one of the craziest animal things I’d seen in a very long time. Until a coworker sent me a picture of the monstrosity that is a shaved raccoon:

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*Ian Malcolm remains the greatest scientific mind of our time.