Sunday, June 24, 2012
A peanut catcher’s daughter: The autobiography of Charlene Squirrel
6:21 AM | 
Posted by
Bruny Hudson |
Edited by Hobo Hudson
The rays of the mid-morning sun hit my eyes. Sleeping on my velvet-lined nest atop silk sheets and covered by a down-filled comforter, I woke up, and my thoughts drifted to the long road I have traveled to reach my current position of the world’s pre-eminent squirrel entertainer.
Born a daughter of a poor but proud peanut catcher one cold winter’s morning, I spent the early months of my life with my siblings in a cramped nest hidden in an oak tree while my father did his best to find food for us. I can vividly remember my father struggling awake before the break of dawn. Slipping from under our one tattered blanket, he staggered to the nearest water puddle to wash the sleep from his eyes and bathe and groom his chest. Then, he would scurry back to our nest with his teeth chattering and dive into our midst so that our body heat could warm him. My siblings and I would crawl over him and huddle together to cover every inch of his body. It always made us shiver, and we had to force ourselves not to recoil from his icy fur.
I asked my father one morning why he had chosen a life of hardship. He replied that it was the only way he knew to earn a living but hoped his sons and daughters would grow up to a better life.
Each day, at the first lightening of the sky, my father would leave our nest, taking our blanket with him and tell us to snuggle close to stay warm until he could return with breakfast. After time without end, he would return, always with a load of peanuts inside our folded up blanket. After shaking the peanuts into our nest, he would tenderly drape the blanket over us again so that we would stay warm while we ate our breakfast.
When I had grown enough to become sure-footed and began to scamper about the limb of our old oak tree, I begged my father to let me go to work with him and learn his trade. One morning, he finally agreed. Although I eschewed the icy morning bath, I was ready to take on my first job when my father gently nudged me and told me it was time to leave for work.
After helping me down the oak tree, my father whispered into my ear not to make any noise and to tiptoe because we had to cross a small strip of grass owned by a big dog named LadyBug who would give any critters she spotted on her property a chase for their lives. I followed my father’s lead, and after we had safely crossed the enemy line, he showed me how to climb the wooden fence in front of us. When we reached the top, we crouched down, and my father, draping the blanket over the two of us, explained that we now had to wait for the peanuts.
As the sky lightened, I heard a screen door open and peeked from under the blanket. I saw a small black dog appear on the sundeck of a house next to the fence we were sitting on. The dog, jumping up and down, barked to his giant slave who was following on his heels to hurry with the peanuts. My father quickly grabbed our blanket, dropped with it to the ground and laid it out flat. At the same time, he rushed me to leap down from the fence and told me to take a seat on the blanket and to stay out from underfoot while he would go to catch the peanuts.
Hopping a couple steps away from our blanket, my father sat up on his haunches and exposed his brilliant white chest as a target, and the dog’s slave threw a peanut at him. Unfortunately, it fell a few feet short. My father started looking for it but soon gave up and instead sat up on his haunches again. The dog’s slave threw another peanut, almost hitting my father in the chest. This time, my father grabbed the peanut, sprinted with it to our blanket and deposited the peanut on it, quickly folding a corner of the blanket over it to hide it. Then, he scurried back and returned with the first peanut. I asked my father why he couldn’t find the first peanut earlier when it was so easy for him to see it later. My father smiled and said by pretending he couldn’t find the first peanut, he enticed the dog’s slave, who wasn’t very bright, to throw another even bigger peanut to him.
If you’d like to learn more about my meteoric rise to the pinnacle of entertaining, you can buy my book for only 9.95 peanuts.
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