“One winter we went to Florida and squirrels got into our attic and had a ball! They like attics.”
Qwilleran decided this would be the easiest column he had ever written. He turned off the tape recorder and strolled down to the creek.
As he approached it, there were sounds of jubilation. Three persons in front of Cabin Three were laughing and crowing and flinging their arms wide: Hannah and a young couple in jeans. The boy from Cabin Two looked on wistfully until his mother called him away.
“What goes on here?” Qwilleran called out.
All three talked at once. “Good news! She’s gone! . . . The airport limo picked her up! . . . Free at last! We’re gonna celebrate!”
Hannah made the introductions. They were Wendy and Doyle Underhill from Cabin Three. They recognized the author of the “Qwill Pen.” They had enjoyed the column on skeeters. Was it true that only female mosquitoes bite?
Wendy said, “That’s why Doyle gets bitten so much. It’s his sex appeal!”
Both young people were vibrantly attractive. She had a tumble of dark hair and merry eyes; he looked wholesomely healthy like a camp counselor.
Doyle said, “I like the name of your newspaper.”
Wendy said, “I love your slogan!”
Boxed in a corner of the masthead were three words: “There’s Always Something!”
Qwilleran explained his mission:
“Today I’m taking the public pulse on the squirrel situation.”
“Ask him anything,” said Wendy, giving her husband a playful shove. “He’s an expert on wildlife.”
“Not an expert, but I read a lot.”
“Then how do you explain the squirrel’s penchant for gnawing power lines and roof shingles?”
“They have to gnaw—or die. Their front teeth, the incisors, actually grow as much as six inches in a year if they don’t grind them down. They have an instinct for substances that make efficient grindstones.”
Wendy said, “I like having them around, but I don’t encourage them with peanuts, or anything like that.”
Hannah said, “They don’t bother me. I think they don’t like Gilbert and Sullivan. But I saw something amazing one day. A squirrel was floating across the creek on a piece of tree bark or something. I couldn’t believe it! I think he was using his tail for a sail. I wish I’d had a camera.”
“May I quote this?” Qwilleran asked.
“But don’t use my name. Some people think I have a crackpot hobby; they’ll think I’m over the edge. . . . Why don’t we sit on my porch and have some lemonade?”
They moved to Cabin One.
Wendy said, “I’d love to photograph squirrels racing and chasing each other and running up trees and flying through the branches. Then I’d edit the film to synchronize with Schubert’s Impromptu in F Minor—perfect squirrel music! Then I’d do a rabbit film to his Klavierstücke in C—perfect hippity-hop music.”
“One question,” Qwilleran asked. “If squirrels are so agile, why are there so many dead ones on the highway?”
“I just happen to know the answer,” said Doyle. “They’re quite comfortable with parked cars, but they panic when they meet a moving car, and they try to get up a tree. But it has to be a familiar tree! They’re territorial creatures. They’ll fight with another squirrel to protect their own territory. . . . so we have this squirrel running to avoid an approaching vehicle, but there’s a Murphy’s Law for Squirrels: One’s personal tree is always on the other side of the road! He dashes in front of the car and—another dead squirrel on the highway . . . My next lecture will be at . . .”
Qwilleran asked the Underhills how they planned to celebrate their neighbor’s absence. They said:
“We’ll whoop and holler and play loud music.”
“We’ll roast hot dogs on our smoky charcoal stove—bacon-wrapped to make more smoke.”
“We’ll do wild dances on the beach, half naked.”
Hannah said, “Count me out of that one—please! But I’ll make cole slaw.”
Wendy asked, “How about joining the party, Mr. Qwilleran?”
He replied solemnly, “Mr. Qwilleran went home early. I’m Qwill, his doppelganger.” A remark that brought trills of laughter. “Yes, I’d like to join your celebration if you’ll let me provide the beverages and keep my clothes on.”
At six o’clock he arrived at the party with beer, iced tea and fruit drinks in a bucket of crushed ice. A rustic picnic table was set with paper plates. Doyle presided over the smoking charcoal stove, and Wendy played a Tchiakovsky recording at full volume.
When they sat down, Doyle proposed a toast to the terrible-tempered Mrs. T. “May she stay in Milwaukee until her house is finished. One night I dreamed I pushed her off the Old Stone Bridge, and when I woke I was profoundly disappointed.”
Hannah questioned the causes of the woman’s crankiness, and the group suggested rotten childhood, lack of love life, hormone imbalance, genes and so forth.
Then they considered the asocial family in Cabin Two. They had apparently gone out to dinner. Hannah said she knew them only as Marge and Joe. Wendy thought they had gotten Danny from a rent-a-kid agency. Doyle said she had a runaway imagination. A photographer by trade, he hopped around taking snapshots of the group.
Then Qwilleran said he would rent Cabin Five as soon as the police released it.
“You’ll have no squirrel trouble,” Doyle said. “They’re wary of cats.”
Finally they discussed the opera being performed by the Mooseland chorus. The Underhills were attending Friday night, also, and Qwilleran invited the three of them to be his guests at dinner on Sunday after the last matinee.
Doyle said, “I find Mooseville and Moose County on the map but no Mooseland.”
“It was the name given to a new confederated high school,” Qwilleran explained. “Now it’s a label for anything on the fringes of the county, surrounding the urban core.”
“Urban core!” Wendy laughed. “You must be kidding.”
“That’s where everything happens! Pickax City, population three thousand, is the county seat. Sawdust City is our industrial capital, also known as Mudville. The center of aggie business is Kennebeck.”
Aggie. It amused him to talk like a man of the soil.
“Are there any teaching jobs here?” she asked.
“Always. Teachers die, get kidnapped, skip the country.”
“Any movies?” Doyle asked.
“There’s a film society, but the original Pickax Movie Palace is now a warehouse for household appliances.”
Wendy said, “That what’s so enchanting about Moose County. A few miles from your ‘urban sprawl’ you have a dark, scary forest straight out of Grimm’s fairy tales.”
“That’s the Black Forest Conservancy, established by the K Fund for ecological reasons.”
The Underhills approved.
“I hear a truck,” Harriet said. “I think it’s the folks in Cabin Two. We ought to invite them for a beer, just to be neighborly.”
The family of three joined the group. Joe worked hard to be friendly, but Marge was shy, and Danny was tongue-tied.
After the party broke up, Wendy revised her opinion. Danny was Marge’s kid, but Marge and Joe weren’t married.
To cap the evening, Qwilleran distributed copies of Tuesday’s paper. “Read all about it!” he shouted. “Miniaturist discovered at Nutcracker Inn! Inside story of an amazing hobby. Don’t miss it in today’s Something!”
Hannah was on the verge of tears. “I wish Jeb were here. He’d be so proud of me.”
After the hot dogs and cole slaw and iced tea, Qwilleran had a strong desire for a cup of coffee and piece of pie. It was after nine o’clock, and a velvet rope was stretched across the entrance to the dining room. But there were diners lingering over their dessert, and the host said he could accommodate Mr. Q. “Sit anywhere,” he said.