Greybon

I’ve been looking for ideas of what to blog about and somewhere along the way I came across Plinky. One of the prompts the site suggested was to write about an encounter with a wild animal. I thought I’d give it a try. I know I tend to ramble, so I’m going to try to be as straight forward and brief as I can. Let’s see what happens:

One night, long ago, I stirred in my sleep. Something felt wrong, which seems obvious since I’d otherwise be in lalaland. This was a different kind if wrongness than was the norm though. You see, the problem was that I was not alone.

I opened my eyes and jerked upright. I heard a scratching noise beneath the foot of my bed. As I waited for my eyes to adjust, I called out my dog’s name, thinking she must be the cause of said noise. However, I got no response. I said her name again, hoping she was just being daft. Silence returned my call.

I peered into the darkness and watched as a claw reached up over the edge of my bed. When large round eyes appeared behind that claw, I screamed. It was the kind of scream that only little girls can do…ie, I woke the house.

When sense returned, I threw myself out of bed and fled to the hallway. There, I ran into my dad and thought I was saved. As it turns out, I was wrong. He gave me no help. I tried to explain to him that a monster was in my room. In typical dad-fashion, he informed me that I’d only had a nightmare and told me to go back to bed.

I spent much of my night staring into the dark, waiting for the creature to return. Eventually, exhaustion took over and I passed out.

The next morning I discovered a pile of gray fur left on my bed. I poked at the fur and examined it closely. I came to a two conclusions: 1, the creature had not only returned, it had slept in my bed and 2, I now had proof! I dragged my dad back to the scene of the crime and showed him the fur. In hindsight, I probably should have gone to my mom because my dad continued to be useless to me. He simply assured me that it was only our dog, Nugget’s fur. I pointed out that Nugget does not have gray fur:

My dad dismissed the proof and returned to his breakfast. *sigh*

I now had a new mission, Prove Dad Wrong. During the day I would scour my room for the creature. Then at night I would stay away as long as my body would let me. Fear was no longer an issue. I waited for the creature to return but it wouldn’t show. No matter what, sooner or later I would fall asleep, then would wake to a new pile of fur. I started to think I was going crazy.

Days passed and eventually the weekend arrived. My brother and I were each ordered to clean our bedrooms. We both had our doors closed while we spent more time playing and wasting time than cleaning. Typical.

Some sort of commotion sounded from the hallway. My dog was pacing, then skidding down the stairs. My dad called us out of our rooms. When we made our way downstairs, we discovered a squirrel inside our house. Nugget had chased it into the dining room, where it had climbed up a drain pipe that stood in the corner of the room.

We stared at it. You know how this goes. Something unusual happens and everyone just stares. Gawks is more like it. My dad must have regained his senses first because he retrieved an old Cool Whip container from the kitchen. He braced himself in front of the squirrel—lid in one hand, bowl in the other. Then he attempted to sandwich the squirrel between the two pieces.

And that’s when the fun began.

You see, this was no ordinary squirrel. It spread its arms and soared through the air…right towards my brother and me. We froze. And screamed. It seemed the right thing to do.

After the initial stunned-mode wore off, my dad corralled the squirrel outside. I, of course, took the moment to point out that I was right all along. A creature had been living in my room. And all was right in the world again.

That’s that for this wildlife encounter. Maybe next time I’ll write about the raccoon that pulled my hair when I was sleeping. Yep, you can be sure that there was screaming there too. :P