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Critters

It sounds like a line from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. “I have to get the corpse off the front porch before the visiting nurse comes!” I say.

This is not as bad as it sounds. There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.

Mom is home from the hospital after breaking her hip. It’s a happy homecoming. Mom is glad to be back in her own domicile and her cat is glad she’s there. Maybe the cat is a little too glad. The morning after Mom comes home, the cat deposits a dead chipmunk on the front porch. He wasn’t able to send flowers to the hospital, after all. He meows for someone to let him in the door and I see what he’s brought.

“Oh Buddy, you brute,” I say. He looks proud as an Oscar winner.

“What?” asks Mom warily.

“Chipmunk.”

“Dead?”

“Yup.”

A sigh. “Let him in. Without the chipmunk.” The cat comes in, rubs up against Mom’s leg, the one with the broken hip. ‘Thanks but no thanks,” Mom tells him.

A visiting nurse is due to come soon to check out Mom’s condition and her living situation. Buddy goes outside and quickly returns before either my brother or I can dispose of his gift. I hear my brother say, “Oh Buddy, what now?”

“Another present?” Mom asks.

Yes, another present. However, this one is very much alive.

“Another chipmunk,” reports my brother as he gently extracts it from the cat’s mouth. He goes to the door to bring it outside, but it escapes his hands.

Escapes.

It bolts from the living room into the kitchen.

“No way!” I screech.

“What? It’s loose? In my house?” Mom cries.

“Yeah, but I’ll get him,” my brother assures her.

“Get him before the visiting nurse gets here!” I say.

My brother and I try to corner the chipmunk in the kitchen. I don’t know if you know this, but I can tell you, those little buggers are fast. It’s a streak of brown-fur cuteness that gets less and less cute as the minutes pass without our catching him. We move chairs, knock against cabinets, bump into the table. It’s mayhem.

“I feel like Ma Kettle! I can’t be tromping around here with a broken hip with critters running around!” Mom says. She’s full up on pain and full out of patience.

The chipmunk careens down the hall, into Mom’s bedroom, and...under her bed. Of course.

My brother runs toward the bedroom, “Come on, I’ll close the door after us!” he says.

“I’ll be right there!” I answer.

I hear the sounds of large furniture being moved. Mom shakes her head and utters the Son of God’s name under her breath.

“I could use some help in here!” my brother proclaims from behind the closed bedroom door.

“I have to get the corpse off the front porch before the visiting nurse comes!” I say.

After I get the corpse off the front porch, my brother and I chase the living varmint around the bedroom. He’s wiry. He’s fast. He might as well have wings.

“We need a net,” my brother says. “There’s a net in the garage.”

I open the door quickly and slip out like an oil slick before the chipmunk can escape the room.

“Did you get him?” Mom asks in that voice that tells me she has a massive headache.

“Not yet. I’m getting a net.”

There’s a slam from inside Mom’s bedroom. Then the sound of my brother swearing. Then a sigh from the couch. Poor Mom. She needs peace and quiet. She’s not getting it.

My brother flushes the chipmunk out from under the bed and I put the net over his small body as he emerges. “I got him!” I shout, resisting the urge to let go of the net to fist-pump the air.

Ah yes, home. Home on the Shoreline, where the cats and the chipmunks play. After Chippy the Chipmunk is released to a safe locale, Buddy the Cat disappears to take a nap in a corner. The visiting nurse comes moments after and declares Mom’s living situation to be clean, safe, and critter-free.

Juliana Gribbins is a writer who believes that absurdity is the spice of life. Her book Date Expectations is winner of the 2016 IPPY silver medal for humor. Write to her at jeepgribbs@hotmail.com. Read more of her columns at www.zip06.com/shorelineliving.