The Old Coot repeats himself

I watched a young guy empty a have-a-heart trap in a wooded area across the river from the village along Route 434 the other day. A bushy tailed squirrel scampered out and ran into a thicket. I don’t know for sure, but I surmise that he trapped it at his house and was getting rid of it in a squirrel friendly way.

I can appreciate that; I’ve been in a decades long war with squirrels. Coming up with ingenious ways to keep them out of our bird feeders. Winning for a short period and then marveling at their cleverness as yet another brilliant scheme of mine has gone down in flames. The guy freeing the squirrel didn’t know that he was fighting a losing battle. The squirrel would return. It’s a lesson I learned in 2004, when I was a younger old coot and published the following article.

A squirrel teaches an old coot a lesson. – September 24, 2004 

I didn’t know squirrels could swim. I hadn’t given it much thought, but had anyone asked, I would have said, “No.” Now I know better. I was out on the river with four friends in our kayaks. You can always spot me when I’m with other people on the river; I’m the slowpoke in the back. I say I’m taking my time so I can observe the wildlife along the riverbank, but it’s because I’m an old coot and no matter how hard I paddle, I can’t keep up with the group, any group, even the AARP crowd.

Jean was in the lead kayak. She pointed to a lump in the middle of the river and shouted, “What’s that?” Being the elder, and self-proclaimed wildlife expert, I took a look and chuckled, “It’s just a log.” She didn’t buy it. “No, she replied. It’s furry!”

“Well,” I countered, “Then it must be a muskrat.” (They’re all over the place, but not usually in the middle of the river). I started paddling; I was sure it was a log and wanted to be first to reach it. It wasn’t a log; it wasn’t a muskrat. It was a squirrel, doing the doggy paddle and making good time. I reported the news and began to follow it, to see where it was going. It headed straight for shore, taking ten minutes to get there from the middle of the river. When it hit the riverbank it jumped out of the water and scampered up a tree.

I was stunned; we all were. None of us had any idea that squirrels could swim. We discussed why it was in the middle of the river. Did it fall out of a tree along the bank and swim in the wrong direction? Was it a teenage squirrel running away from home? Was it an old coot squirrel, banished by the clan for endlessly talking about the good old days?

I didn’t expect to learn why the squirrel was in the river, but through a quirk of fate, I stumbled on the answer. The mystery was solved at a meeting of the Riverwalk advisory committee. A husband and wife from Owego sat next to me. They live on the river and do a lot of kayaking. I asked if they had been out lately. “No, we haven’t. How about you?” I told them about my squirrel experience. “In fact, I concluded, the squirrel hopped ashore right near your house.”

They both began to laugh. I didn’t think they’d be able to stop. It was like when you start laughing in church; they couldn’t get it under control. Finally, they calmed down and the husband, wiping tears from his eyes, told me what was so funny. He’d been trapping squirrels and transporting them across the river. He caught nine so far this summer, but the squirrel population in his yard never changed. He’d wondered if they were coming back via the Court Street Bridge. It never crossed his mind that they might be swimming back. “The whole thing makes sense now,” he exclaimed. I learned a good lesson. Just when you think you know everything, something happens to show you how little you really do know.

Postscript – Just a few days ago I gained some additional squirrel knowledge. Because of our hot dry summer, the “pack of four,” as I call them, started stealing my wife’s tomatoes, taking a bite to get the juice and leaving the evidence behind. I trapped them and took them to a new home, 2 miles away. Three days later they were back. That’s when I did the research I should have done before moving them. Google informed me that squirrels should be moved ten miles or more if you want to keep them from returning. Proving to me, yet again, you’re never too old to learn.

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