Neighborhood excitement.

A couple of weeks ago I was on the phone with a friend in the afternoon and talking as I was going around my yard picking up trash that the wind had blown in, and as I was by the chainlink fence that separates it from the muddy unpaved driveway next door, what do I suddenly see that scares the shit out of me, but a squirrel that leaps up inside the front passenger window of this red car in their driveway, INSIDE the dang car!

I wasn't sure at first what I was seeing, but there it was, like with its front half up against the window so that you could see its whitish underside and its little front paws, and its devious-looking little rat face just resting there and looking out this way and that through its splayed feral eyes, as its chest heaved, rapidly.

At first I thought that it had somehow gotten in the car and gotten locked in there, but when I came to from my shock and started and went to go try the front door to open it and let it out -- it opened -- I could see that the back left passenger door window had been left cracked open, and a light bulb went off and I realized that it must have scrambled through that window like it had gone through an ill-fitting lid to go get into a dumpster.

And, as I opened the front door, it kind of hightailed it out that window.

I wasn't sure what to do at first since I couldn't start the car up to go and close the window, so I went to knock at the door next door -- no-one was home -- and so I ended up going into my cottage and getting a note and leaving it there for them, propped between their screen door and its frame out on their front porch.

I believe it said that the local squirrels were NASTY and VICIOUS little beasts, with those adjectives in capitals and double-underlined, although I don't remember the exact wording, and although of course I no longer have the note in front of me.

Anyhow, like a day or two after, I'm reading on the front porch in the late afternoon and eating some (Thai) takeout after my lunch shift at the restaurant, and I see a (white) (undergrad) girl going into the house next door, so I call out to her if they got my note that I had left them, about a squirrel that I saw in one of their cars.

"Yes," she was like, "Thank you!"

And, she said that the car window is actually broken, and that's why it was down.

"Oh," I was like.

Then, I said that maybe they should stop up their car window with something, then, since the squirrels were jumping into that crevice like they were getting into a dumpster, and who knows what they could do to their car.

"They're nasty and vicious little beasts," I was like.