We are in Washington, visiting friends and making a side trip to the Folger Shakespeare Library to see the Trevelyon Miscellany. The friends don't come to the exhibition with us; they are too busy making arrangements to move to Bangor, Maine. We attempt to hide our disappointment that they'll be so far away and make remarks about the lovely, mild Virginia winters. We are sent on our way to the Folger.
After admiring seventeenth century manuscripts for an hour or so, we head back to the metro station. In the shade of some federal building of the gray, stone cube variety stand raised beds of English ivy and magnolias not yet in bloom. A rustling sound catches my ear and I glimpse animal activity in the ivy. Something white? I stop and look. "Is that a squirrel?"
Oz stops to look too. As if swimming, the squirrel bobs up from the ivy, like some Loch Ness monster in furry miniature, and makes serpentine curves through the leaves. He's too gray to be albino, but too white to be a strictly normal gray squirrel. The squirrel hops onto the granite coping and shakes his tail at us.
"Will you look at the nuts on that squirrel?" Oz says and pulls out his camera, but before it's powered up, the squirrel—really Fark-worthy—has jumped down to the sidewalk and walked under a car parked at the curb. He lowers his camera when the squirrel vanishes. "So much for that."
"Do you think he's albino or just old?" I ask.
The squirrel reappears on the far side of the car and crosses the street. He doesn't scamper with squirrelly fluidity, he seems a little stiff.
"I think he's old," I say.
The squirrel pauses. "Fark you. I'm worn out from impregnating squirrel babes all spring. A straight squirrel in DC scores big time. Heh."
We are put in our place. In no hurry, the squirrel continues on up a tree.
327 words | May 16, 2004 09:36 PM | Real true story