A brush with death.

I was sitting in my kitchen, sipping a cup of coffee and thinking of a story I had read on A2K about a deer jumping through some guy's window, resulting in a death struggle between the man and deer. Ultimately the man triumphed by snapping the poor misguided creature's neck. A movement caught my eye and glancing up I noticed a squirrel sailing through the air straight at my kitchen window. I realized what was happening immediately -- the squirrel, like the deer, had seen its own reflection in the window, and thinking it was a competitor in the quest for the sexy female squirrel, it charged, hellbent on destroying its adversary.

The glass exploded into a thousand fragments and the squirrel was on my table. It attacked.

I'm a fairly big guy, in relatively good shape, but we're talking about fighting an animal here. A sinewy, furry creature whose life is spent in the trees cultivating its muscles and sharpening its teeth. The fight was furious and carried us all around the kitchen, knocking over things in the process. Chairs tipped, cannisters exploded, and a leg on my ironing board was shattered.

The fight raged on and finally I was able to get the squirrel into a headlock. I thought I had the upperhand and was just about to attempt the twist maneuver and snap the demonic beast's neck when he made a quick move, like one of those wrestling things you see on the World Wrestling Federation, and I found myself pinned to the floor, arms unable to move. Slowly the beast lowered his head, his deadly incisors glistening in the morning light, his cold, beady eyes black as death and devoid of emotion.

I knew I was a goner.

"Gus!" a voice said, "Let's go! The boys are waiting for us at the bowling alley."

I looked up from where I was sitting at the table, coffee cup still in hand, and saw my cousin, Joe Birdidnick. He was asking me to come to the bowling alley. The whole squirrel incident must have been a dream. I started to rise out of my chair when a thought occured to me. My cousin Joe Birdidnick had been killed over a year ago, ripped to shreds by a pack of wild dogs.

At that point the squirrel's teeth begin to sink into my neck. I realized Joe Birdidnick's ghostly appearance from the netherworld must have been some sort of plea for me to not give up the fight. With a herculean effort I freed one of my arms and ripped the squirrel from my bleeding neck. I threw it across the room where it became impaled on the prong of a stuffed antelope in the corner. The light in the its eyes flickered for a second, a muscle twitched, and then death embraced the creature.

It was over. I collapsed on the floor and sobbed. I cried for the blood on my neck, the death of the squirrel, and the memories that were evoked by seeing my cousin Joe Birdidnick's brief respite from the grave.

I glanced up at the table and noticed my coffee cup had miraculously remained unspilled. Picking up a chair and sitting down at the table, I proceeded to finish the now tepid coffee.