Edward had literally filled the tree with female squirrels and showed no sign of slowing down. Mary wondered what would happen when he ran out of squirrels. Even as this thought crossed her mind there was a swoosh as Edward dropped off the next squirrel. This was a red squirrel! Gray squirrels are larger and, as the name would indicate, have different coloring. Terry and Mary didn’t have anything against red squirrels but their plans didn’t include them either.
Terry started to get nervous, when would this end? Would Edward continue forever? Would the oak tree be buried under red squirrels? And then what? Mice? Rabbits? What had they done?
The little red squirrel, who was female and very happy to of been spared Edwards predations, looked around to find itself surrounded by a sea of gray squirrels. However, squirrels (of any sort) are quick to adapt and the little squirrel introduced itself.
“Hi, I’m Rosso. Full name’s Rosso Maglietta. The strangest thing just happened…”
Terry grinned. “A hawk just scooped you up, flipped you over, and delivered you here.”
Rosso’s eyes widened, “That’s exactly what happened! How did you…”
“I need to know what you were doing before the hawk grabbed you,” Terry interrupted, “so I can figure out why the hawk is grabbing red squirrels now.”
“I wasn’t doing anything special at all; eating a pinecone I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Yeah, seems like I was just doing regular squirrel stuff. Nothing extraordinary at all.”
“Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?”
“Nothing special at all. I just a squirrel. Pretty average squirrel really; no particular personality traits. I don’t have any interesting hobbies. Never do anything really notable…”
Mary began to shake.
Rosso was still babbling. They let her go for a while and indeed she described absolutely nothing remarkable about herself, her history, or anything she’d ever done. Finally, she ended with “… I’m just a generic average squirrel I guess.”
Squirrels are clever creatures. They know when to hold ‘em, and they know when to fold them.
“Why don’t you stay here for a little bit, okay Russo?” Mary’s voice was shaky. Russo agreed readily.
“We’re just going to go for a little walk.” Mary announced to no one in particular. She jabbed Terry’s shoulder to get her attention and motioned for her to follow.
The two sauntered down the tree trunk but once they got to the ground Mary whispered into Terry’s ear “meet me at the stinking petrified bear and don’t dawdle.” Then she was gone in a flash. Terry, not knowing what was going on, made haste to follow.
Meanwhile, Rosso Maglietta sat happily in the top of the tree making no effort to distinguish herself from any other squirrel. It sure seemed like she had fallen into an interesting story. She couldn’t wait to see how it ended.
Rosso Maglietta is a fairly adventurous Eurasian Red Squirrel to travel from Europe to America and get snaffled by Edward the eagle. With her red coluring, she COULD be Irish and you know what they say about red headed Irish females … I foresee sparks flying.