Sara Stein

May 6, 2009

WRT 219

Prof. Huey

Screech!

You know that time in the morning when you know you’re awake, but you don’t want to face it? You just don’t want to admit that you’re done sleeping. You’re dreaming; dreaming of something really great, and it seems so real. You’re on a beach, or flying through the air and it feels so genuine; the wind lightly blowing against your face. It’s morning and the warm dew is refreshing as it blankets your body while you fly over the countryside. You love these dreams; these brief moments when you’re lost in your own mind, which end abruptly once the screeching starts.

At first, you can’t imagine what could make this horrible noise. Everything around you starts to come into focus. Suddenly, you feel extremely uncomfortable. It’s early August, so it’s unbelievably hot and having air conditioning is way too expensive so you have all the windows open. Now you kick yourself daily for not splurging for central air.

The first screech is sharp and yet it’s a long one. It seems to crash into your eardrums like a speeding truck hitting a brick wall. You jerk up in bed, looking around frantically to find the source of the noise. At first, you think that it seems to have been a one time thing. It’s not. Just as soon as your head hits the pillow again, you hear it, “Screeeeech!” It happens a few more times. It feels like you are repeatedly being rudely awakened by your alarm clock, except it’s not an alarm clock that’s doing the waking.

Finally, around the fifth time you hear it, right when you feel like your ears are going to explode if you have to hear it again, you jump out of bed and run to the windows. You’re thinking, is there an animal dying some horribly painful death outside my window, as I’m peacefully sleeping? No, that can’t be it. You couldn’t imagine an animal dying ten feet away from you, without your knowledge. You love animals. Process of elimination tells you that it’s not your cat that’s making the noise. She’s luckier than you are. She’s peacefully sleeping through the awful noises.

After furiously scanning outside the windows for a while and finding nothing, you spot it. There it is: a squirrel looking like it’s having a seizure shaking the majority of a small tree. You think, what the hell is wrong with that thing? You have no distinct knowledge of squirrels, but the combination of the noises and movements of that animal are just not right, just unnatural. So, with no real awareness of squirrel behavior, you decide to give in, leave it be, and start your day.

So you happen to talk to your parents that day and you recount the story of the seizing squirrel. Unbeknownst to you, your father seems to be something of an expert on squirrels. He says, “Oh, that’s just their mating call,” and you think why didn’t I think of that? It seems so logical, but now what do you do?

The next morning, guess how you get to wake up. There it is again: “Screeeech!” This time, you mean business. You tear off your comforter and race to the window. While singing No more, Mister nice guy… in your head, you proceed to practically rip the screen off of the window and chuck anything you don’t really care for, out into the air, aiming at the squirrel. There are textbooks flying, coffee cups, an assortment of mismatched shoes. The color of the miscellaneous objects is a man-made rainbow glinting in the sun. Of course you never actually hit the damn thing. Your aim isn’t exactly on point when you were out drinking the night before and your head is still as fuzzy as it was when you laid down at four A.M.

So this is to be your relationship; you and the squirrel will battle every morning. This small animal affects you every day. For the next month, you must choose between sleeping with the windows closed and sweating off half your body fat, or being forced to wake up early by an animal whose brain is roughly a tenth of the size of yours. Well, this animal wins for the next few months, but hey, at least you’re days are a little longer now. You don’t spend the whole day sleeping, missing the sunshine. Eventually, you will come to thank that squirrel, maybe.