Squirrel Man

It's almost Halloween (well, it's almost October.  I get excited-shoot me), so I thought I'd take a little time out and tell you a horror story.  Whoooo-ooooh! (That's me doing a scary sound).  So let me tell you about Squirrel Man.  A truly fearsome individual.

Okay, so this one time I went to the park to go running.  (What?  Horror stories start like this: full on normal-world mundanity. ) So anyway, I obviously needed to stretch first, because that's what they say you should do.  And I'm a follower.  So I walked up to this big tree by the path and leaned on it while I stretched my hammies. You know, I'm just hanging out, maybe imagining actor things, ankle in hand, stretching whatever that muscle is.

Now, I had noticed, when I first approached the tree, that there was a little squirrel kind of heading my direction, but I thought nothing of it.  Maybe it had a nest in my hamstring-stretching-balance-tree.  So what?  Wait, squirrel.  Me first.  But then right around the time I switched legs I noticed that my little buddy had a friend.

Okay, picture this: He's super tan.  Like, that kind of tan like you're outside all the time because you don't have a home-you're maybe homeless.  And I could tell how tan he was because he wasn't wearing a shirt.  I think it might've been hanging from the back pocket of his very oversized jeans, but that really wasn't my focal point.  This intense young (old?  He was actually kind of ageless, maybe he was a weird immortal like in the Sandman, or a mutant....) man observed me from underneath his head scarf, and I realized he was originally coming to my tree, but I beat him to the punch.  You snooze you lose, guy!

What was weird about this dude though (as if he wasn't weird enough already-although, in fairness, people work out at that park...  Maybe that's why he was shirtless.) was that he had a jar of peanut butter and a butter knife.  Now, I know you were wondering about his relationship and interaction with that little squirrel, so let me drop the bomb on you:

He was feeding the squirrel.  He was using his butter knife to spread peanut butter on the tree next to mine.  I realized at this point, that I was using his peanut-butter-squirrel-tree to stretch.  Whoops.  So he's buttering the tree, and the squirrel is eating peanut butter upside down off the tree, and Squirrel Man is crouching by his pal,  watching me watching him. Whoops again. Caught staring.  Then he offered the knife to the squirrel; feeding it directly off the knife.  He looked at me again, and as we made eye contact he took the knife and licked it himself.

Ewwwwwwwww!  Gross!  Squirrels are rodents!  Rabies!  Ewwww!

And then I ran away.  Seriously, I started running around the park.  And the Squirrel Man faded into the night (morning) to haunt the dreams of children (joggers.  Me) forever.  So whatever you do  watch out of the Squirrel Man!