Paradise Squirrel'd

This one time

at Squirrel CAMP

(they call it Squirrel CAMP -

it's really more of a rehab center for highly disturbed squirrels -

The Squirrel Center for Advanced Matters of Perversity -

Squirrel CAMP sounds better, though),

Suicidal Squirrel

♫(insert theme music)♫

was having a bad day.

He just wanted to die.

His macaroni art kept coming unglued.

(His pictures pretty much looked like squished squirrels even before they came unglued.

The ungluing was really more of a blessing for everyone else in Macaroni Art 101.)

The CAMP people got mad at him on

"What Do You Want to Be"

day when he rolled himself in flour

and squirted ketchup on himself

and said he wanted to be the ghost

of a squirrel who had been pecked to death by a troop of killer hummingbirds.

…

Either that or a Mrs. Paul’s Breaded Squirrel Stick.

…

..

.

Ew.

The other squirrels in "group" kept looking at him all funny like

every time it was his turn to talk.

His branch-mate snored.

Loudly.

He was pretty sure that he was breaking out with poison ivy

in a very unpleasant place to break out with poison ivy.

(An unpleasant place even for a squirrel.)

And then to top it all off,

Dr. Squirrel N. Freud kept asking him,

"And how does that make you fe-eeel?"

And no matter what he answered,

the doctor would just tap his pencil against his teeth and say,

"Hmmm. Ver-ry ink-teresting."

It was enough to make our SLF want to run screaming right off the end of his branch.

(Never mind that wanting to run screaming right off the end of his branch is why he was there in the first place.)

All of the other squirrels from his tree had pooled their acorns to get him some help

or at least to get him away from them.

(Can you blame them?)

And Squirrel CAMP was cheaper than a real hospital and there was a lot less paperwork for them to have to fill out.

(Squirrels don't do so well with paperwork - not even normal non-suicidal squirrels).

The main reason Squirrel CAMP was cheaper was the location.

It was next to an airport.

For most squirrels, this would have been merely an annoyance,

but for our SLF, this was opportunity –

great big shiny opportunity.

Disturbing creative thoughts rolled about in his mind

(well, tried to anyway - squirrels have very small brains,

so there's not much rolling room there).

He finally settled on a leap of derring-do.

As the plane taxied toward him on the runway,

gaining speed with every second,

he would jump,

Matrix-like,

into the air and propel his body to red vaporous death via jet engine.

It was a good plan.

Very dramatic by squirrel standards.

Shame it didn't work out that way.

He plotted,

and planned,

and schemed,

and drew more diagrams.

And then,

in the night,

he escaped from Squirrel CAMP.

(it wasn't like they locked him in or cared or anything - it just sounded more dramatic that way.)

Oh, and he sent out invitations,

because after all,

there’s just no point in having a dramatic death without an audience to say

“Oooooohhh”

or

“Eeeewww”

as the case may be.

So,

there was our SLF,

standing up on his back feet in the middle of a runway,

eyes closed,

arms spread wide,

Suicidal Squirrel Zen.

The plane was moving faster than he had expected it to.

He was all ready to jump, when...

OUCH!

The plane tire ran over his tail.

Flat as a pancake.

Again.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

Oh no.

Not by a long shot.

You see,

his flat tail kinda got caught in the tire tread.

Then there was this kind of flipping round and round thing

and

sky

pavement

sky

pavement

sky

pavement

sky

pavement

sky

and then the pavement was going away.

And this really didn't seem like such a good idea anymore.

And then the landing gear went up,

taking our SLF with it.

It was dark,

but at least he had time to pick his tail out of the tire tread.

He had a lot of time.

Most especially by squirrel standards.

Squirrel time is different.

He got bored.

He got lonely.

He got hungry.

Death by starvation just didn't seem right for his idiom.

Then the doors opened,

and he fell out on a different runway and the plane kept going.

It was very bright.

And hot.

Very

hot

pavement.

OUCH!

Squirrels don't like road rash any more than people do.

When he got on the grass,

he looked around.

And there it was.

The epitome of all his suicidal little squirrel dreams.

.....

....

...

..

.

A volcano.

It was a long way away.

But our SLF had squirrelly determination.

Death awaited him.

Hot lava death.

And all he had to do to reach it was to walk there

across the beach

under the swaying palm trees

and striped beach umbrellas

and past cool tropical drinks in coconuts.

And that's when he saw her.

At the edge of the beach.

The tropical she-squirrel of his dreams.

And she winked at him.

And gave him what was a come-hither look if he had ever seen one

(he actually never had, so he really hoped that's what that was).

Anyway,

she took him by the hand when he walked over to her and started talking to him in some weird tropical squirrel chatter.

He just smiled and nodded.

She was a lot smaller than him.

And she wore some weird white jewelry.

Kinda looked like bones.

Must be those coconut thingies.

He followed her.

She was going toward the volcano anyway.

So at least he’d be that much closer to melty squirrel death when she left him and the brood of squirrel-lings in later years for Dexter,

the pool-squirrel.

Very tragic.

Poor squirrel-lings.

Turns out,

there was a whole tropical squirrel village.

And they were all little squirrels.

With high pitched little squirrel voices.

And they kept looking at him all funny like.

Kinda hungry funny like.

They gave him a massage with coconut butter and sprinkled some nice exfoliating sea salt all over him and kept pinching his fat places and smiling really big and rubbing their stomachs.

It was kinda weird.

But they led him up the volcano.

He was so excited.

Witnesses for his incredible immolation.

They were almost to the top.

It was pretty warm up there,

but not as bad as he had expected.

Not nearly as bad as he had thought it should be.

And shouldn't there be smoke or something?

As they stood on the edge,

looking down into the crater where he planned to seal his doom,

there was a little bit of steam coming from a very small hole,

a smaller-than-squirrel hole.

There was some smoke, though.

Just not volcano smoke.

Bonfire smoke.

And there was a big pot.

And the little tropical squirrels seemed really excited.

One of them pulled out a blue pen and started writing on our SLF.

Only not words.

More like lines.

Like sections.

And our SLF suddenly had a horrifying realization.

That white jewelry was squirrel bones.

That massage was squirrel seasoning.

They were going to eat him!

That's not suicide.

That's cannibalism.

Cannibalistic tropical pygmy squirrels.

Oh yeah.

That wasn't cool.

Not cool at all.

Our greasy SLF

(from the coconut oil)

managed to ooze away from his erstwhile captors and ran shrieking back to the beach.

He crawled up into one of the striped beach umbrellas and stayed there chattering his teeth and cursing the non-volcanoness of that volcano until sunrise.

The whole night,

he was certain he was about to feel sharp pointy little squirrel teeth gnawing at his ankles.

But he didn’t.

(The tropical pygmy squirrels had a great luau,

boiled coconuts and all,

but they never could figure out why their guest of honor ran away,

after they had been so nice to him and given him tribal tattoos and complimented his girth and massaged him and planned his wedding and everything.

TiFi, the tropical she-squirrel, was broken-hearted.

Luckily, Dexter the pool-squirrel was able to console her.

They married later and had a large brood of tropical squirrel-lings and were very happy.

Until she left him for a vacationing accountant squirrel from Detroit named Harvey.)

Then he began to plot his escape from the island.

The Island of the

Cannibalistic Tropical Pygmy Squirrels.

That's just fun to say.

.....

....

...

..

.

TO BE CONTINUED

.

..

...

....

.....

Will our SLF escape?

Or will he become a canape?

Will he make a normal escape via plane?

Or will his idiom demand a more dramatic exit?

Will he ever just get it over with and die???

....

...

..

.

I'm just getting started you know.

And these really do disturb me as much as they disturb you.

Maybe more.

After all, I carry them in my head until they get out.

Not such a pleasant place to be.

It would be better if there were poppies.

Or daisies.

Daisies are cute.

And butterflies.

I like butterflies.

But no spiders.

Spiders are icky.

.

..

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