Rocky the Flying Squirrel

The other day I was reading the NY Times and on the front page there was a picture of this pre-historic cross between a beaver and a platypus. To me it looked a lot like a flying squirrel.

It reminded me of the time I blasted a flying squirrel.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about the appropriate verb to use to accurately describe the event in which I dispatched that poor squirrel but blasted seems to work best. I was even describing the event to my friends Congo Kate and Pundista and after their initial reaction of awwhhh, the poor flying squirrel, they got on to the real business of “what kind of gun did you use?”.

It was a “22”, for which the bullet travels a mile. But it was safe as there were no neighbors for at least a mile in the direction I was shooting. They also agreed with me that “blasted” was the most descriptive term I could use to portrait the events that took place that day long ago in Minnesota.

That day, my dad came into my room saying, there’s a rabid squirrel on the deck of the house. It was threatening my two baby sisters who were playing on the same deck. I went outside to investigate.

The squirrel was awesome looking. Like no squirrel I had ever seen before. It had insane eyes, like a bush baby on steroids with batman-type wings. And it was aggressive. And she was standing on the triangular-type bird house I had built in Boy Scouts. She was wild-eyed and literally hissing at us while we were standing on the deck. Drastic actions were definitely in order.

So I blasted her.

Being a well-trained hunter from a proper family, a burial in the pet cemetery (near the garden with other pets, road-kill and birds-that-had-hit-the-window), and a thorough investigation of the situation was in order.

And then we heard the squeaking. Squeaking coming from the very bird house the rabid, evil-looking squirrel was protecting. It contained six baby flying squirrels. I had killed Rocky and Rocky was a mom.

So we began to feed those baby flying squirrels with an eye dropper. Every four hours for weeks.

The baby flying squirrels survived and we took them fifty miles to the Duluth zoo where their descendents hopefully live peacefully today in the woods surrounding the zoo. I now believe I actually helped the species as according to Wikipedia, “Though their lifespan is only about five years in the wild, flying squirrels often live between 10 and 15 years in captivity”.

Rock on Rocky (and your decendents).