my neighbor the squirrel
The first night I stay here —
I sleep on the floor.
The movers moved me out Sunday night but could not move me in till Monday afternoon. So I sleep on the floor [do not do this when you are sore from packing and moving] to be here for the cable man, the gas man, and the mover men bringing my stuff back the next afternoon.
The next morning I am lying on the floor. Kind of dazed and exhausted from the move thing. Half inside the apartment. Half outside on the balcony —
[That means my legs are on balcony in sun but the rest of me is lying on carpet inside staring at ceiling. That is not where I slept it is just where I ended up the next morning.]
And I hear a squirrel talking.
There is this big utility pole outside the balcony and I looked at it after I first got here and thought, That is not feng shui kind of missed that on the first pass through hmm.
But now I am lying half on the balcony, half not, waiting for mayhem to hit, and I hear the squirrel talking.
Not yelling the way squirrels do when they get mad. Just low volume squirrel muttering.
I lie there a while, just sort of absorbing everything and being dislocated, but finally I get curious about the squirrel talk and start to look for him.
He is a gray squirrel and he is sunbathing on one of the t–bars of the utilities pole. The t-bar is exactly the same gray as he is it is weathered silvered wood. And he is lying on his stomache, blending and absorbing sun and his mutter is like someone getting a good back rub saying, Yes, right there.
The squirrel checks me out every once in a while. Making sure I am not dangerous. And adjusts positions every once in a while. Making sure maximum squirrel is getting maximum sun.
Some finches come and sit on the wires and that makes him mad, he gets up and curses them out till they fly away.
This is his spot.
They fly away and he settles back. And I settle back. And we lie there a long time.
Then his interior squirrel alarm goes off and he goes away to do squirrel stuff.
I miss him a little after he leaves.
Soon my phone rings and it is time to go do things apartment and I go away too.
where that squirrel photo came from :
that is from silent enough
20 Responses to my neighbor the squirrel
This is my kinda neighbor. Yah, way to go Max.
BTW, doesn’t it change the Feng Shui for the better to have a soft elegant animal like a squirrel hanging out on the utility pole.
Tell me you did not sleep those twelve hours on the floor.
Was he a drunken squirrel?
It totally chnages the feng shui. If it is just an ugly old pole, that is no good. But it is not just an ugly old pole. It is a squirrel sunbathing shelf and also the resting spot of many many birds. Doves. Finches. A raven. Ravens are special to me.
Kitty, nah, I slept that twelve hours in the bed.
Stil, the only thing the squirrel was drinking was sunlight.
Naturally high on life. Excellent!
So, are you picketing?
At least the squirrel didn’t do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qivqpAjAjEg
I am thinking she is, Woeful.
I am on strike. Every writer in the union is on strike. I am not on a picket line.
[Anita I am afraid to look.]
Nah…go look, Insanity would have loved it.
amm
I can see Max lying in the sun with squirrelkitty kneading her back, trying to wake her up.
Mmm, annoying as cats can be doing the wake up call, squirrels would be plain scary doing the same thing!
Okay that is just brilliant and totally deseves its own post.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the last time the screenwriters decided to strike didn’t go so well, did it? It precipitated the rise of reality TV (which I despise). It was a good move for the editors though, as it employed them in droves to try to make total crap TV into something barely watchable. Best of luck this go around, I’m rooting for you!
The strike has already impacted tv – all of the late night shows were reruns last night. They can’t let it last too long…
[without losing lots of money]
I used to manage a bookstore for this HUGE chain and of course if you came in under your operating budget you got a bonus.
The ONLY and I mean the ONLY place you could ‘save money’ was to cut employee hours or higher part-time highschool kids…stunts like that.
It’s the workers that get boned here…so the Writers need to be tough on this one.
You are thinking of the last strike scare, Woe. The last actual strike was 1988. And that is the last time residuals were addressed and that was for television reruns.
All these other mediums, dvds, iTunes, internet web content, cable, all these other places where tv shows and movies are resold and aired, have no current structured residuals or royalties compensation for writers.
And studios refuse to address this. It is a good gig for them. They take the writers’ work and resell it over and over again without paying any royalty outside of an outdated 1988 television rerun residuals model. They buy Beamers while writers struggle to put kids through college. And this has been a growing problem for the last twenty years. If anybody had actually pulled off some sort of fair negotiation strategy during the last twenty years, writers would not have to strike now. However, studios have not negotiated fairly or reasonably and the Guild has not negotiated intelligently and now we have this. It is not a good sitch and it is going to cost everyone — and not just the writers and studios. Everyone below the line is going to get hurt too because, when there are no new shows to film, everyone goes home, not just the writers. Which sucks. But you cannot resell and resell writers’ work without paying a royalty. That is not how it works. It is wrong and it has been a worsening problem for twenty years now and it has to stop.
okay a squirrel.
i was in OC all weekend with weird-ass folk from the film industry and weirding out about the writer’s strike.
squirrels?
damn you’re better at denial than i am.
you rock. oh please be my hero
Well, a lot of people have asked about the strike so I guess I should post about it. I do not really like posting about work stuff, I come here to play mostly. Also most work stuff is pretty confidential so it is not the sort of thing you want to be talking about in public, doing that violates a sort of trust. But, the strike is pretty public. People are hopping around with signs. So. Strike posts. Oog.
… You mean I have to sit through reality TV and you guys didn’t even strike? I hope the studios get everything they deserve.
Fight The Power!