Squirrel - Stumpy

My son and I saw a tiny bleeding baby squirrel on the cement patio one morning while taking out the trash.

Its tail was cut off. A front paw was torn, and the squirrel was in pain.

The baby scampered awkwardly over to a flowerbed and covered its face like a child playing hide and seek, probably believing if I can't see you, you can't see me, and I'm safe. 

We wanted to help it, but it was terrified of us, and so it disappeared beneath the wooden fence.

We figured it could not survive.

We were wrong.

She survived a major fall out of the big oak tree.

A hungry hawk spotted her out on the street, and swooping low, it chased her down the street until she ducked under a dumpster and disappeared. The hawk landed and peeked under the dumpster but couldn't get at her. She looked like a rat running like that, with no bushy tail behind her.

She lived in spite of her injuries and fears, but she became a loner, trusting nothing in her world.

My daughter named her Stumpy. The tail is barely there, and it looks stumpy.

Stumpy's one passion is food. All day, she eats and eats and eats. All day she's out there digging and finding and eating and stealing.

Every day, she gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and now she's almost the size of a small muskrat.

No squirrel chases our Stumpy.

No squirrel takes her food.

When Stumpy walks on the flat roof, you can hear her. She's fat, that girl.

She's brazen and brave, too.

She gives you the evil eye, and she won't run from you.

She's a power squirrel.

Her belly droops and bulges.

She doesn't scamper. She hops, like a bunny.

And when she flicks her tail in anger, it is hilarious, because she only has a furry stump to flick.

Squirrels can look so pretty. But not Stumpy. She is definitely not pretty.

The other day, we saw her climb to the top of the wooden gate outside the office window, a major lumbering feat right there. Then she held up her front paws and they were filled with dried corn that she'd stolen from the jays.

One at a time, she ate the kernels, chewing faster than any squirrel has a right to, and glaring in the window at us like we were the lunatics, not her.

She is a joy, a perfect example of overcoming the bad in her life, the coyote attack, and the nasty old hawks who kept putting her on their menu.

They don't do it now, though. She's too darned big.

We figure one day she'll be so huge that she'll never make it up a tree for the night, putting herself in danger to predators in the dark.

If it comes to that, she'll probably go on a diet.

Naw.

She's Stumpy, the Mother of all squirrels. She'll be okay.