In my mind, the record player will always be on, the squirrel spinning around and around like a mall holiday train track, but this wasn’t my visual or memory to begin with, it was Hannah’s. I learned later, after the chase, that Hannah came down the stairs for a face-off with the squirrel, who was sitting on our record player. I was on the phone with Esmé when the choreography defied sense. Sometimes I am so lonely I’ll believe anything. Only then did I notice my own dogs in my own room with me. Then I heard her say, Stay in the room and don’t come out. I knew this-I heard her upstairs saying something about metaphor or meter when I also thought she was going through bags in the kitchen. It especially didn’t make sense because Hannah was teaching a class on Zoom she wasn’t making all those noises. I was on the phone with my friend Esmé and I thought, Stop making noise like that. In retrospect, none of them would have made noise like that-they’re all fairly quiet. The first time one of the squirrels breached the house, meaning it made its way inside the actual house, I thought all the noise was my wife Hannah. It is a cheap metaphor-animalistic properties, so what. I write about violent mating as the squirrels scale the windows, making eye contact, unafraid. But still, having written about it, I am writing about it again-this time in novel form that story doesn’t go away for me. I don’t want to compare squirrel mating to my own assaults that feels off-color to me. I thought about that as metaphor, but I’ve already written that kind of essay, that story. I like that the female squirrel has power-that the fighting above our kitchen and bedroom and bathroom isn’t just squirrel rape but something more. I looked into this myself, on the internet, and read that squirrel semen coagulates into a vaginal plug inside the female, which she sometimes removes in order to fuck some more. That’s what the Clint Eastwood guy said to me yesterday. They practice aerobics and compose music in our office spaces they built a roller coaster above the stairs. For a long time, they did not believe us about the squirrels. They extend ladders and hustle through the crawl spaces on their hands and knees. The other men sort of just follow directions. Another is older, wizened by years of animal mysteries he’s the One Last Job guy in the movies who does his thing impressively, wickedly, cunningly. One seems queer my wife and I think he’s flagging himself to us, though we have limited time with other people these days we are lonely we’ll see anything. There are a few men-all with different energy and trapping styles. I’ve become friendly with the men who come to take care of the squirrels. This should carry allegorical or metaphorical properties that might make it feel better. Each time they scratch and chatter above the bedroom ceiling, or nibble through the insulation of our attic leaving a confetti of toxins on the kitchen counter, each time they screech and scream their mating calls and fuck and tumble and find a new way into our house, I think, This should mean something. I can’t find a metaphor for the squirrels.
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