For those of you who have no clue about the reference in the title of this entry, there’s a comedy song familiar to most Southerners called The Mississippi Squirrel Revival by a guy name Ray Stevens. He’s sort of like Weird Al meets HeeHaw. This one particular song talks about a squirrel getting loose inside a church during a service and terrorizing the people in the pews. Quite a funny song. If you’re remotely interested in hearing the song and, as surprised as I am that it’s on there, you can see the video on the YouTube link I’ve included.
This whole introduction is to say that what just happened while I was taking a walk at the park near my house reminded me of the song, which made it even funnier and more ironic.
There’s a large park a block away from where I live and I take walks through it almost daily for exercise. Given that it is, after all, a park, there’s a large population of squirrels and other critters in residence who are spoiled to the peanuts and chunks of bread that many visitors dole out during their walks through the trails. Since I’m a frequent visitor to the park, I buy unsalted parched peanuts to toss to the little buggers as I’m making my way around.
I stuffed my pockets with a few fistfuls of peanuts before I headed out and found the squirrels out in force from the very edge of the park on. So, I happily tossed treats to the ones who came running when they heard me walking through. I’ve been walking through the park for a couple of years now on an almost daily basis and I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many squirrels in one walk through as I saw today. It’s been raining for a couple of days, which usually means that peanut butlers are fewer and farther between. But, I’m dedicated and not deterred by the drizzle, so I more or less had the park to myself.
As I made my way around near the first pond, I looked behind me to see three squirrels running after me to place their last-minute orders. There are several different types of squirrels in this area, most of which are colour variations on the typical squirrel. But, this park also has miniature ones which many people take for baby squirrels, though they’re actually fully grown members of a species called Douglas Squirrels. They look very similar to chipmunks, but without the stripes on the sides of their heads and smaller tails. The funny thing about these particular critters is that they’re super fast and also very aggressive – not at all timid or nervous like their larger counterparts. So, as two “standard” squirrels were approaching, one of these little suckers came running full force and ran halfway up my leg and was clinging to my calf – thank goodness I was wearing thick track pants or I’d have claw marks on my leg!
I shrieked (yes, *I* actually SHRIEKED!), flung around and he went flying, though he didn’t run off until he got his peanut! This isn’t the first time that I’ve had an over-eager peanut patron climb right up my leg, but the funny part was that I had a vision of this exact thing happening when I first got to the park!
Right after, the whole incident had me laughing out loud mixed with a little dash of looking over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t going to be ambushed again! The comedy of the whole thing made me think of that Ray Stevens song which made it even funnier after the fact.
Who said nothing interesting can happen on an average walk in the park? haha