I Fed A Squirrel From The Wrong Side Of The Park Sidewalk–I feel so ashamed.

Written 8 May 2014 and copyright2014 by Michael-Tyrrannis I Saurranno-Schwing. All rights reserved.

I feel so ashamed. She came up to me like she knew me. I held out my hand. She made contact. She took the pizza crust from my hand in her little mouth. She ran off to eat it. It was then, as she continued running, that I found out to my utter horror I HAD FED A SQUIRREL FROM THE WRONG SIDE OF THE PARK SIDEWALK!!! One of THOSE squirrels had infiltrated among my friends, snuck up and ran off with their blessing! You know the kind of squirrels I mean. Those homeless ones in the side of Military Park by Blackford Street. The ones that stare at you when you’re eating, then come up when you leave looking for tidbits of food. The ones that know if they ask for anything we will call the police on them for aggressive panhandling and harassment. That depraved kind deep in their fermented mulberry addiction. The ones that pee on every tree and poo behind those same trees. The ones that run and hide when you walk through the park, staring at you so they can catch you off-guard and jump you for your food. But there is no privacy in the park. There are eyes everywhere: begging squirrel eyes, little beedy black goose eyes, hawk eyes looking down at you, meadow vole eyes looking up at you, faceted mosquito eyes targeting in on you, ant and beetle eyes on your rubbish left behind. It’s still sending shivers down my spine that I had to even look upon one of THOSE homeless squirrels stealing from the cultured tax-paying society centered on the gazebo on the real side of the park by West Street; on the correct side of the sidewalk. It detests me I was forced to interact with one of THOSE KIND of scavenging low-life squirrels. Me a taxpayer who cannot enjoy my park without seeing or hearing, or worse, interacting with one of THEM!

[Those who are familiar with me or my writing will catch the humor derived from metaphor. To the rest of you, THOSE squirrels from the wrong side of the sidewalk represent the stereotypes some people have of homeless people. While sometimes those ideas are correct for the particular person involved, one must understand other homeless people like myself are no threat to you, are citizens, taxpayers, and voters enjoying the park we own too, and need nothing you have even though some of us may be “service provider resistant”, a term I found reading some responses to Channel 8 WISH news stories about homeless people, agencies and the Homeless Bill of Rights.]

Inspiration for this came from actually feeding a squirrel that ran to the other side of the park and my very active imagination. While I sometimes feed the squirrels on the other side of the park, it is usually by throwing the food at the base of their trees and they come down at their own leisure. Contrary to some opinion I do not always make the squirrels take it from my hand and only a few will do that.