LAST CALL: Peanut Gallery
Macomber, Shawn
LAST CALL SHAWN MACOMBER Peanut Gallery HILST IT WAS NOT EASY for this country boy to leave the New Hampshire Seacoast for the concrete jungle of Washington, D.C., after some...
...The scene stopped them in their tracks...
...It did not...
...This loco gringo has a posse now...
...They sat on their haunches in a semicircle around me, waiting patiently like little furry disciples...
...I screamed inside my head...
...He hissed...
...Ah, young grasshopper, I see you have learned your lesson well, his expression seemed to convey...
...Aki...
...I took another couple steps closer...
...The other morning, six squirrels greeted me as I left my apartment...
...But there was no mauling...
...Walking to the complex's trash room one afternoon, I confronted an unexpected enemy—not a mugger or an escaped convict, but a smaller, furrier foe: a Jamaican squirrel...
...Unfortunately, it slipped my mind...
...When I returned squirrels once again blocked my path...
...I heard a noise...
...The landscaper stood a few feet away leaning on his rake, smiling at me...
...A squirrel hung above me on a thin branch, wild eyed, moving slowly up and down in the swaying breeze...
...At this perfect moment the two Latinos came bounding out of the apartment building...
...I began to think about borrowing my father's flamethrower and going to war (with the 70 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2004 squirrels, not the Latinos), but I wasn't sure that sort of thing was legal outside of New Hampshire...
...City squirrel stood up on his hind legs and postured like a 1920s boxer...
...That's right, boys, I wanted to tell them...
...I wore a blue work jacket...
...I know this not because he was wearing an Africa flag hat or singing Bob Marley songs for spare change on the Metro, but because his tail fur was dreadlocked...
...Every day I'd defer to them, and then give the youths dirty looks as they chortled with glee...
...After all, humans and squirrels had been coexisting peacefully for millennia...
...Squirrels now eat out of my hands...
...I ran out of the apartment, down the walkway, and drove straight to the supermarket to buy a bag...
...After that, things only got worse...
...I produced a peanut...
...When we opened it up again two 90-degree days later, the First Mate was not happy...
...Instead the landscaper pulled a peanut out of his pocket and flung it at the squirrel, who happily sat right down and began gnawing away on the shell...
...I dumped the bags of trash in the back of my wife's car, planning to return in a couple hours...
...One day while observing the hostile world from my window, I caught a glimpse of an old Asian landscaper...
...The Jamaican squirrel rushed him...
...The squirrels weren't hostile, they were asking for peanuts...
...They hissed...
...At first I thought this squirrel might just be a bad acorn...
...On a bench a few feet away, two young Latinos burst out laughing—one so hard that he almost had a seizure...
...Leave him be...
...What was my problem...
...I wondered if the whole situation was my fault...
...But on my way to work a week later, the Jamaican and four of his cronies gathered on my walkway...
...I can walk into the middle of the apartment complex lawn and whistle, and moments later squirrels will scurry out from under the cover of brush, jump down from their nests, and race toward me...
...They got out of the way...
...As I took in the scene I noticed that the landscaper was wearing an old blue work jacket...
...Since I am from New Hampshire and squirrels are our natural allies, I whistled at him...
...I avoided this confrontation by running onto the grass and ceding the sidewalk to them...
...He's just a kind old man...
...In the weeks that followed, I passed out dozens of peanuts...
...Every day the squirrel gang would meet me...
...It was a beautiful, quiet neighborhood and I believed peace would reign in my new kingdom...
...LAST CALL SHAWN MACOMBER Peanut Gallery HILST IT WAS NOT EASY for this country boy to leave the New Hampshire Seacoast for the concrete jungle of Washington, D.C., after some careful searching I found a small green oasis just outside the city...
...They stood up...
...Worried that he might be rabid, I backed down...
...One of the squirrels looked over at them and hissed...
...The car smelled like a morgue bus broken down in the desert...
...There was no derisive laughter that morning...
Vol. 37 • September 2004 • No. 7
