The Squirrel Obituary

The Source

by Ken Bradbury

Obituaries are just no fun at all if you’re dead and can’t read them. I just went to my third funeral ... not really mine, actually ... where the eulogy was given by a well-meaning minister who really didn’t know beans about the dearly departed but stumbled on the best he could from whatever hearsay information he could gather on two days’ notice. In cases like that, the family could just have a good friend get up and talk. Every time we get a new preacher I get this awful fear of dying and lying in wake at the hands of a guy who’s not sure what my name was. That’s why I thought I’d write Della Dosier’s eulogy while she’s still around to hear it. If her hammer gets tripped and the minister is new, he can always refer back to this article. Della is a cleaner. Long as I’ve known her, that’s all she does. Cleans. She works for one of those Jacksonville firms who clean for hire and every evening you’ll find her in some bank or business or governmental office, vacuuming carpets and shaking the rugs. She enjoys her work and folks enjoy having her around although most of them are gone by the time she gets there. But the joy of her life could also be her downfall if she’s not careful. Della feeds the squirrels. Brown squirrels, gray squirrels, the occasional albino ... big, small, toothy and toothless, they all know that Della is good for a handful of peanuts, the half-eaten Twinkies she’ll pull out of the trash, bread crumbs, biscuits and yesterday’s bagels. This is heaven for the squirrels. The geography has been a little lower for Della on occasion. Her employer has warned her more than once about this. The letter of reprimand read something like, “The reputation of our business rests on our professional cleaning service. Any other activities which might otherwise detract from the purpose for which you are hired may damage our credibility as a reliable contractual business.” Interpreted that comes out to “Quit feeding the darned squirrels! It makes us look bad.” So Della quit the feeding ... sort of. Now she waits until her boss has gone on to the next job before she feeds the squirrels. I have personally seen this rebellious law-breaker in action. Everybody’s gone ... you’ll see a glass door open carefully then Della’s little head will peek out, looking both ways. If you look real close, you’ll notice the squirrels looking both ways, too. Then she’ll sling a handful of breadcrumbs out onto the sidewalk and the door will slam shut. She used to enjoy watching the squirrels eat but this has become too dangerous. Now, don’t get me wrong. That woman does her job and does it quickly. She can scrub a floor before you can turn around and the squirrels don’t slow her down a bit. Truth were known, it’s probably the incentive of the squirrels that makes her Hoover suck it in with the desperation of a beauty contestant in the finals. She’s also contracted to clean a local church sanctuary and although she’s received no letters of reprimand from the haughty and holy, her request for a squirrel feeder was turned down. Since a church is usually only open for business one or two days a week and doesn’t require the daily scrub-job of busier places, Della was worried about the squirrels eating the other six days. She sent a letter, saying she’d provide the box, the pole it sits on and all the food the little critters could eat. The church allowed as how it would detract from the looks of the building. After all, they spend thousands of bucks a year on their landscaping and they were not going to ruin it with Della’s squirrel box. Della’s a Christian woman and would never commit the sacrilege of messing with a church’s landscaping. In fact she was stumped on how to follow the obvious law of God and shrubbery while still taking care of His creatures. So, to satisfy the squirrels’ hunger and still safeguard her own salvation, Della stops by the church every evening to feed the squirrels by hand. She does it quietly, not wishing to disturb the really important finance committee business on the inside with her trivial pursuits on the outside. Della’s a softy and she knows it. When the comets started knocking chunks off of Jupiter some time ago and the whole world celebrated the grand show in the galaxies, all Della could talk about was how poor old Jupiter must feel. Such demented thoughts are what come from a lifetime of feeding squirrels, I suppose. Della got pneumonia last winter and came back to work a week before she should have. She just couldn’t stand the thought of little Chip and Dale out there without their accustomed crumbs. I’ve known Della all my life and can testify that there isn’t a more gentle spirit on the planet … a wiry little gal with salt and pepper hair and hands that have seen a lifetime of washing and polishing. When she does make that final trip down the church aisle, there’s a lot worse that could be said about a person than “She fed the squirrels.” When her final bucket gets emptied, they’ll hire a new cleaning lady who will probably scrub ever bit as good as Della. Nobody coming into their clean office the next day will even notice a change. Nobody except the squirrels.

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