The Man Eaters…
By Darrel Pendergrass
Most men of the outdoors are able to face danger without fear of injury or harm, mostly because they are intelligent and well versed in the ways of the wild. It comes with the territory.
Should an outdoorsman be confronted with an edgy black bear our guy knows to hold his ground; he shouldn’t run around in circles flailing his arms above his head in a panic, or do anything else that will startle a man-eating bear. It’s best to keep your wits and to move slowly. Do not show fear as bears can sense an easy meal.
Truth is it’s understood that with any animal encounter the sage advice of keeping calm proves best. Do not provoke animals with big sharp teeth. Don’t do it.
I spend most of my days working as a librarian, a relative un-outdoorsy profession where thankfully brawn is of little use. I work in a 100-plus year old brownstone library in Washburn that Andrew Carnegie commissioned way back when. It is a beautiful building, with high ceilings and large windows.
Working at the circulation desk recently a patron came up from the basement meeting area, a wide-eyed expression splashed across his face. “Are you aware there’s a squirrel down in the basement? We were in the side room when he came running through, we have him cornered in the used book room. You might want to come down.”
A squirrel, eh? One of those light-weight red-haired jobbers I bet. Those tree rats seem to get into everything. I should be able to dispatch this nuisance in short order, I thought to myself.
That’s when a couple of problems reared up. First, in cornering the squirrel the impromptu rodent posse had overlooked that the back door of the used book room was ajar, and now the squirrel had escaped into the boiler room hallway. Further, the boiler room door was also open, giving Bucky a good hiding spot from which to ambush unsuspecting librarians.
Still, I’m a man. I’m over 6-feet in height and I go about 200-pounds. And I sometimes wear blue jeans. No squirrel is going to loiter for long in my library. No sir.
Into the boiler room hallway I plunged, right behind Tom, the cleaning guy, whom I had commandeered from vacuuming. Tom’s older than me and wears a heavy jacket, it appeared he could handle a squirrel attack better than I could if it came down to that. He didn’t seem at all afraid, of course I hadn’t told him why we were down there.
The boiler room itself is the smallest room in the library. There’s enough space inside for two boilers, a water heater, and some other machinery that I have no idea what they are. There’s a spider web of water pipes and air-exchange systems crisscrossing the room. It’s all pretty mechanical. And not well lit.
I’ll cut to the chase. The squirrel in question was not one of those tiny red ones; it was one of those five-pound gray squirrels with razor-sharp teeth and the blank expression of a serial killer. I’m guessing a pterodactyl would struggle lifting this monster off the ground. And look, the crazed squirrel is up on a pipe, right at eye level.
After I careened out of the boiler room, running in circles with my arms flailing above my head, I felt a little bad for having pushed Tom down in making my exit. After he regained consciousness Tom said he never even heard me scream, but most everybody else in the building had.
In good time the squirrel in question lumbered up out of the boiler room and made his exit through the back door. I complimented Tom for having played dead in warding off an attack, and Tom said something about deceased relatives urging him to walk toward the light. The whole ordeal was all very confusing.
Anyhow, safety has been restored to the library. Just watch yourself in the basement.
Darrell Pendergrass lives in Grand View