Alan Gutierrez

I Love Caddyshack by Ian.

There is a ruckus in the roof sometimes. I thought they were mice, gnawing away at the insulation or the timbers in the room.

One day I saw that they were squirrels. There was a heavy scurrying in the attic, and I traced the source of the sound with my eyes. They made circles overhead ran to a corner of my room and then appeared in a perfect transition on the branches of the live oak outside my window. Two squirrels in a mad dash to the trunk and out of view, as if they were tuner sports cars, squealing out of a parking structure and onto the freeways of California to settle some score with their scurrying.

They are noisy and annoying creatures when they are in the attic. They are gnawing away at something up there, but I no longer think of them as pests. All things considered, they have just as much right to be in the house as I do.

This morning I awoke to a tapping at my window, which is in a gable on the roof. It could have been someone repairing the roof, which was the first thought forming in my scattered waking mind, but I looked up and saw immediately, at an arms length away, a little fuzzy face peering at me in at me. It was a squirrel.

I was lifting my head to better put it into view and it ducked. I wasn’t about ask it what it wanted, so I put my head down to fall asleep. As I did, I heard the tapping again and popped upright with start. The squirrel was looking straight at me, with a pinched and furrowed expression. Whatever the squirrel wanted, it wasn’t me. I was more than it bargained for. It ducked.

At this point I turned to put my back to the window, having had enough of this squirrel tapping on my window with it’s plaintiff looks and no requests. The tapping resumed, but I didn’t startle out of sleep. Eventually, the squirrel went away.

I woke up late this Sunday. Recalled my miscommunications with my furry little voyeur. I thought of Carl Spackler in Caddyshack.

The rest of the morning has been spent with the Kenny Loggin’s song, “I’m All Right” running through my head.