Dead Squirrel

It was a cold, annoyingly windy day when I ran over the squirrel. I was driving to work when a squirrel darted out from the forest straight in front of my car. I barely had time to blink before I felt the small bump of death. Normally, I’d ignore the squirrel and continue on my way but today was different. Today was special.

I pulled over by the side of the road, got out of the car and ran over to the squirrel’s corpse. It had been run over by three other cars by the time I pulled its flattened carcass off the sidewalk. Waving my arms frantically to avoid ending up like the squirrel, I carried him to my car, trying to keep him as far away from my face as possible.

I threw him in the backseat, got back into the car, and hung up an air freshener to combat the horrid smell.

As I drove, I thought about how fuzzy his squashed body felt. It felt like the fur of my girlfriend’s German Shepherd Bruce. Speaking of my girlfriend, I got the squirrel for her.

It was our anniversary tomorrow and I had no idea what to get her until a few minutes ago. I knew that she loved taxidermy because she had quite a lot of it in her apartment. A taxidermied fox, a taxidermied weasel, a taxidermied snake that scared the life out of me whenever I looked at it because of how realistic it was. Since I couldn’t afford to stuff any of these exotic creatures, I figured the squirrel would be the next best thing.

I decided to bring the squirrel into the office during our lunch break. “Jesus Christ Alan! What the hell is that?” my coworker Janet yelled as I whipped the creature out of my pocket in the break room.

“It’s a squirrel,” I said, calmly. “I ran over it this morning.”

“Well, get that thing out of here! That’s disgusting! Oh God, I think I’m gonna throw up,” she said, lurching to the bathroom.

“What are you gonna do with a dead squirrel anyway?” Tom asked, sipping his coffee. “I’m gonna have it taxidermied and give it to Mary,” I said. “She loves taxidermy and it’s our anniversary tomorrow.”

Tom frowned. “Didn’t you and Mary break up like 5 months ago?” “No,” I said, quickly. We stood there in awkward silence until I polished off my sandwich, threw out the wrapper, and started to walk out of the room.

“Are you alright Al?” Tom asked, coming over and putting a hand on my shoulder. “I’m fine,” I said. I then pushed his hand away and walked out, leaving him standing there, staring at me over his coffee.

The day went by relatively quickly. As I was driving home, I decided to name the squirrel Stanley, after popular fictional character Flat Stanley as they now shared a similar body type. I arrived home and looked up taxidermy places as I was making dinner. Most of them were either too expensive or couldn’t do it by tomorrow. I finally found one about 40 minutes away. Big James’ Taxidermy and Tuxedo Rental seemed like the perfect option for me. I could not only get the taxidermy done quickly and cheaply, but could also get myself a nice tux for tomorrow.

After eating my microwavable Pasta Mama noodles, I put on my jacket and hit the road with Stanley safely tucked away in my trunk. There wasn’t much traffic so I arrived relatively quickly. As I pulled into the small parking lot, I noticed the tacky neon sign nailed to the front of the building. The B, X, E, and L on the sign were all burned out.

I hopped out of the car, got Stanley out of the back, sealed him up in a plastic bag that I decided to bring, and walked inside.

The interior was small and dimly lit, just as I expected. There was a small desk in the front with a half-asleep employee sitting behind it. There was a lot of taxidermy and suits scattered about which also wasn’t too surprising. I got a bit spooked by a taxidermied lizard sitting on the desk and accidentally backed into a display case featuring some depressed looking alligators which crashed down on top of me.

My God, my God. We’re gonna have another lawsuit on our hands now. We can’t have another lawsuit. I’ll lose my job! Nobody respects me to begin with and now they’re gonna-”Jesus, he’s waking up! My God, are you alright?”

My eyes were trying to focus but they just couldn’t seem to do so. I had a pounding headache and my left shoulder was erupting in pain. Blood was gushing from…some part of my face. I couldn’t tell because of the whole unfocused eye thing.

“Just stay right there, alright? Don’t move. I’ll get the first-aid kit from the back.” I heard footsteps as the employee dashed away. As my eyes focused, my headache worsened.

Now that I was able to see properly again, I reached up to find out where the blood was gushing from and discovered that it was coming from a sizable gash on my forehead. I also felt a lizard tooth embedded in my forehead. This slightly disturbed me so I yelped and jumped a little. The movement caused a nuclear bomb of pain to course through my temples, making me yelp again.

The employee came back with the first-aid kit and bandaged the wounds on my head and shoulder, muttering about lawsuits the whole time.

“What are,” I croaked. “What are…your prices?”

The employee blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“I said,” I groaned, struggling for breath. “I said…what do you charge…for a taxidermy job…and maybe…a suit…thrown in as well?”

The employee stared at me for a few seconds. “You’re clearly delusional. We’ve gotta get you to the hospital immediately. Just listen to me very carefully; the story is I’m your brother, I was visiting when a shelf fell on you, and I drove you to the hospital. OK?”

I groaned again.

“Look, there’s something in it for you, alright? If you keep your mouth shut and stick to the story, you’ll get yourself a nice check for…will 3 grand do?”

I decided to play around with him a bit. “Make it 5.”

“Ok, ok, ok,” the terrified employee stammered. “I’ll make it 5. Just please don’t sue me. I’m not losing my life savings again! Now let’s get you to the E.R.”

As he ran into the back again, I noticed Stanley, still inside the bag, lying just a few feet away from me. I tried reaching out to grab him and yelped again. As the employee came running, I passed out.

The poor bastard ended up pushing me to his car in a wheelbarrow before lifting me into the backseat and driving to the emergency room going several miles over the speed limit. He got pulled over and threw a picnic blanket over me to hide me from the cop. He slowed down a bit after that but we still arrived at the E.R. relatively quickly. I honestly can’t remember much of what happened after that. What I do remember is waking up in a hospital bed 9 hours later with the lizard tooth removed from my head and my shoulder in a sling. I discovered that I had dislocated it and that I had received a concussion from the same giant lizard that the tooth in my head had originated from.

I’ll admit, after everything that happened I forgot about the anniversary. I thankfully remembered after a nurse walking by my room dropped her phone, causing her earphones to get unplugged and “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel to blast at full volume across seemingly the entire hospital. As the nurse was getting reprimanded, my scattered thoughts brought a memory to the forefront of my mind.

Me, well, high school me, taking my first date to see Say Anything… The boombox scene. Us, dating all throughout college. Her, throwing a cup of scalding hot coffee at my face. I guess you could say we had different opinions. I called myself the victim of a big misunderstanding and she called me a cheating bastard. It was never meant to be.

Me, trying to recreate the boombox scene outside her window. The boombox playing “Still” by Ghetto Boys instead of “In Your Eyes” because I made the mistake of buying the boombox secondhand. Her neighbors calling the cops because they were quite upset after being woken up by gangsta rap blaring at full volume at 6 in the morning.

I was inspired. I had learned from my mistake and was now going to actually play “In Your Eyes” outside Mary’s window so that she could see what a mistake she was making by not acknowledging me. Also a great way to kick off our anniversary. But I had to get the taxidermy done first.

I knew I only had until the end of the day to get everything done so I had to act fast. However, there was just one problem; I was forced to be confined to a hospital bed for the next day or two. Just as I was about to give up, an idea struck; I could escape from this place. It would take a bit of effort, stupidity, and luck but I thought I could do it and if I really tried, it would go off without a hitch.

Oh how wrong I was.

It was surprisingly easy to get out of the building. I simply pushed one of the doctors down a flight of stairs, knocking him out, swapping clothes with him, and confidently strolling out of the building with no one paying me any attention. I couldn’t believe it; the oldest trick in the book actually worked. Suddenly I heard several members of security screaming “Stop!” at the top of their lungs which obviously wasn’t you know, good.

I broke into a mad dash across the vast parking lot as I heard the thuds of footsteps behind me. I guess someone must have seen me on the cameras which was why I had to put my high school track days to use right now.

It turns out the best way to lose several security officers on your tail is to run straight into rush-hour traffic. Well, it seemed like the best way to heavily concussed me. I amazingly didn’t die and was able to make it through the lanes of speeding cars, serenaded by a multitude of honking horns and loud swearing.

The security guards were smart enough not to dash into rush hour traffic so I was able to lose them relatively quickly. Now onto the next issue; getting the taxidermy done.

Like any concussed maniac wanting to taxidermy a road-killed squirrel, I decided to hitchhike. After about three hours of of stumbling around with my thumb out, I was finally picked up. Unfortunately, it was by a police car.

I only noticed that I was in the cop car about 15 minutes after getting into it. The sirens and handcuffs probably should have tipped me off. I also must have figured that the guy reading me my rights was reading some sort of personnel manifesto that he wrote. I thought he was the weird one.

My memory gets a bit foggy after that. The incident consists of stationary images in my mind. I remember seeing the taxidermy shop, the car skidding off the road, falling to the ground out of a broken window, and stepping inside the shop.

The employee was relatively surprised to see me. He began writing me a check but then I told him about the squirrel.

After struggling through his memory for a bit, he remembered that he had found the squirrel on the floor after he came back to the shop and threw it out. I asked him to show me the garbage can which led to me digging through the trash in the back of the shop. I walked up to him and slammed what I thought was the squirrel down on the desk. When he kindly pointed out that it was a banana peel, I went back to the garbage can. I may have been heavily concussed but was not stupid so I was able to locate the squirrel this time and he agreed to do the taxidermy job for free, as a way of apology. He also threw in a nice suit which was greatly appreciated.

I asked him to do the job quickly. He listened. He really listened.

It took him about an hour and a half. When he handed me the finished product, I thought it looked fine. I later realized that the squirrel looked like it had been brought back from the dead and was about to bite into something with a manic grin.

I decided to take an Uber to Mary’s apartment. As I sat in the back of the car with the newly taxidermied Stanly by my side, I didn’t know what was gonna happen but I sure as hell knew something was.

It went about as well as you expected.

I arrived at her apartment about half an hour later, got out of the car, and pulled up “In Your Eyes” on my phone. I raised it to max volume and hit “play”. An ad for Grubhub blasted across the neighborhood. I dropped my phone, swore loudly, heard the wonderful screams of New York citizens, and heard a balcony door open above me.

Disregarding the advice of that one Netflix movie, I looked up.

There she was.

I hadn’t seen Mary for about a week or so. She looked as beautiful as ever, even though she looked like she wanted to strangle me at the moment.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she screamed as “In Your Eyes” finally started playing. “You’re violating your restraining order. I’m gonna call the cops!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” I yelled. “You still love me and you know it!” She sighed in disgust and walked off the balcony. “Wait,” I yelled, pathetically. “I have a gift for you!”

No answer.

Well, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Next thing you know, I was scaling the wall of her apartment building.

I’d become quite skilled at it over the past few months. The reason that she had filed the restraining order in the first place was because she caught me hiding in her closet and freaked out. Now, I couldn’t come within a hundred feet of her and had to pay a ton in legal fees. While I was terrified that she would call the cops, I was willing to risk it to give her the squirrel.

Grabbing onto bricks and risking both death and arrest, I climbed onto the balcony, picked up a small stone patio table, and threw it though her sliding glass balcony door. I heard a scream and a multitude of alarms going off. I then ran inside, dashed into the kitchen, and whipped out Stanley.

I dropped him into Mary’s hands as she screamed and dropped her phone. “Hello? Hello?” the 911 operator yelled.

“Happy anniversary! His name’s Stanley, by the way.”

She screamed some more and then chucked Stanley right into the ground. He bounced up into the air and shattered the light fixture hanging above her.

She turned to me, her face the color of steaming hot borscht, and slapped me as hard as humanly possible. I tumbled to the ground and hit the back of my head on a metal table leg, not helping at all with my concussion. She then pulled me to my feet and over to her bedroom closet. “You wanna be in my closet so badly? Well then STAY THERE!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, shoving me into the closet and locking the door.

I was trapped in the closet until the police arrived. This led to a variety of court dates and a criminal insanity ruling, despite my concussed state at the time which I don’t think was fair at all but I think I’m just rambling now. I was also considered a “repeat offender” which, if anything, meant my passage through the legal system was quicker than usual.

So now I’m here, in the Jamesville Mental Health Facility. It’s in upstate New York, not too far from where I live. It’s alright here, I guess. There are some real nutcases here, I’m under constant surveillance, and I have to make daily visits to multiple incredibly annoying therapists and mental health professionals. One of those bozo therapists told me to write about all of these events. She went on about how seeing them on paper will make me realize how horrible my actions were. Well, she was wrong! The only thing I realized from writing this is that the only being I’ve had a good relationship with was Stanley. Maybe that means something I don't know. You know, you’ll probably think I’m completely out of it for saying this but, I miss the little critter. I really do.