Squirrel Town(Kristen R. Eames) (Note that the author was 17 years old when she wrote this story.)


"Just where did you live, again?" my good friend inquired confusedly. "Squirrel Town," I reiterated and added, "well, of course, its name wasn’t really Squirrel Town, but the way those squirrels exhibited their superiority and bold reign of the town, you'd think it was the Squirrels’ Town!”

I grew up a bold and adventurous child in the U.S. centralized state of Kansas City, Missouri; centralized in that every storm, from north, south, east, and west, seem to be magnetized by this here Kansas City, and those storms pulled together as the protons and neutrons of an atom. Kansas City is the gathering place of the society of inclement weather.

Be my town ever so capricious in weather and regimented by the squirrels, my greatest attraction and endearment to it came from its homely atmosphere, its rustic simplicity, and its unfailing verdure. Come winter, the town reverted to a city spread with frosting and decked with holiday lights and cheer. Come spring, the town was overgrown with blossoming trees and natural flowers that spread as far as the eye could see. The smell of honeysuckle and red buds filled the air, and the only inconvenience came when those nasty-blood suckers of mosquitoes came. Come autumn, the trees were splashed with varied color-yellow, orange, violet- and pumpkins on the neighbor's porches grinned at you with a welcoming to your home. Come summer, the smell of grain in the factories flew on the air and gave an agricultural atmosphere, as the clamors of the neighboring children reached your ear from the street.

Every season, every day in fact, was unsuspected and inevitably surprising. It leaped at you like a wet bullfrog, and what a day would bring forth, no one ever knew. The weather was unpredictable; thus the calm beauties of nature in one hour could become the savage means of devastation in the next. That stately oak, in which the cardinals built their nests and squirrels made their public gymnasium, could surely become a battering ram on a firm foundation of a house if the weather turned foul. And boy, did the weather vacillate indeterminately between foul and fair! The effect was similar to being on an elevator, except that this elevator could never make up its mind.

Enough of the weather- the time has come to talk of the true heart of Squirrel Town, and what else could it be-but those darned squirrels. Kansas City could aptly become Squirrel Central. And if novels such as Animal Farm or Hitchcock’s The Birds contain the least morsel of veracity, Kansas Citians have cause for fear-much fear! I can put it no simpler than this- they were everywhere, in every sense of where. They seemed to swarm and congregate as bees; one would think that they were concealing secret messages and going to and fro with ulterior motives and conspiratorial missions. Dogs of the neighborhoods united in a courageous attempt to rid humanity of the evil rodents, but alas, to no avail, for the squirrels had the handy advantage of climbing trees and jumping at least 3 feet. In fact, the squirrels of our town were like no other. They were indestructible. They nonchalantly squirmed east to west and west to east over power lines and jumped from sky-high trees to the hanging boughs of another. They knew no fear. They faced the committee of revolting canines with dauntless audacity and knew not what it was to flee in the midst of battle. On very rare occasions did I perceive the dead remains of these invincible conquerors; however, I do recall two corpses on a forlorn street under the shadow of a great tree, yet my imagination tells me that these two must have been star-crossed lovers that mutually met acceptance in suicide. Yet but for this pair of Romeo and Juliet squirrel, not another corpse was found that pointed to a squirrel’s fallibility or capacity for death.

It seems odd then that I should have loved my rustic town if it was practically invaded and ruled by these dominating creatures and if the weather was so whimsical and unreliable. Yet squirrels and weather alike made my hometown what it was-home. Be it ever so humble-be it ever so strange-be it ever so ‘fantastical’-it was home nonetheless. And those who know that contented feeling of homely atmosphere know what it is like to embrace one’s home for its amenities as well as its oddities and inconveniences. Both the pleasant and the unpleasant make the sweet and sour of home a blend of conflicting feelings into an integral solid of appreciation and simple love. And it was that appreciation and simple love in me that makes me recollect nostalgically my Squirrel Town and call it ‘my.’ It was my town, though those usurpers of squirrels would certainly call it theirs, and being apart and remote from it makes it no less my own than it did when I physically dwelt there. I yet may visit there in my thoughts, and especially in my memories.

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