Jaci Dawn

Writing about the pets we had is not just about the animals. It’s about who I am and why I am this way. I was always hyper-sensitive (no one knew there was an actual personality or psychological portrait of a Highly Sensitive Person, and I didn’t even discover there was such a thing until I was in my 40’s). My brother, sister, and mother were all tender toward animals. Dad feigned indifference, always swearing off another pet when the last one died, or denying my sister and I our life-long dream of owning a horse.

The year was 1963. We’d moved from the rental on Lay Street into the haunted house on Minor Street, but the Game Warden was still Boyce Coffey. The Coffey kids were about the same age as the Wilcox kids: Matt, the oldest; Mark, my brother’s age; Crystal, a year older than me. (On a side note, my niece, Chrystal, was named after Crystal). We got into trouble that only Game Warden and Forest Service kids could get into, like the year my brother “rescued” a dozen or so barn swallows from under one of the bridges along the Humboldt River. (Another side note: I carry a scar on my face from that rescue, but the scar wasn’t my brother’s fault, or even the swallows’ fault. And we raised the swallows to adulthood, turning them loose with great big tosses into the air so they could catch the wind and fly away.)

Mr. Coffey, the Game Warden, killed some ground squirrels. This wasn’t – and is not – a crime. Ground squirrels can cause a lot of property damage, and they aren’t anywhere close to endangered (but don’t tell 8 year old me that).

I once shot a ground squirrel. My husband took me out rifle shooting and he convinced me it was OK to shoot at ground squirrels. I got a black eye from the recoil of the .7mm as I leaned across the hood of the car to shoot. The damn squirrel writhed on the ground and I began to cry. “I need to shoot it again and kill it. Would you please kill it?” My husband assured me that I’d hit the squirrel dead-on and that it was “just reflexes”. I refused to ever go squirrel hunting with him again even though I understood the terminology and that the squirrel was actually dead.

Mr. Coffey ended up with a nest of baby ground squirrels that his sympathetic children couldn’t quite bring themselves to kill. Mark sold one to me for a fifty-cent piece. (It must be noted that when our respective parents got wind of the financial transaction, the fifty cents was returned. However, the emotional damage done was permanent: I was now the proud owner of an orphaned baby ground squirrel.)

I named him “Chipper”. Dad built him a cage out of an old tin something and wire mesh (the same tin something that later housed the swallows and sliced my mouth open wide enough to receive stitches, hence the scar on my face). I was charged with keeping Chipper alive and healthy.

I was not a good wild animal mom. I’d go in spurts. I’d gather all the wild alfalfa from the ditch and deposit the fresh stuff in Chipper’s cage and he’d grow and thrive for a few days. Then I would forget about him and he’d near death.

Mom brought out the eye dropper and canned milk and she would nurse him back to life.

The cycle began again.

The summer waxed and waned and Chipper grew. He wasn’t exactly tame, but Mom could handle him when he was ill and I pretty much handled him when he was healthy.

My sister. Denny was…a liar. She was jealous of my pet squirrel, but she was also conniving. She went into the shop where Chip was kept, but not for the purpose of playing with him or feeding him. Instead, she got to playing with Dad’s tools. And she got hurt. Whatever tool she was playing with caused a cut on her hand that looked like two teeth grazed her skin. She bled. She cried. She claimed Chipper bit her.

Mom knew better, but the damage was done.

The damage? Denny turned Chipper loose in the shop and he disappeared. He was gone. Escaped. Winter was approaching and we soon lost all hope. The tin cage was set aside and I eventually forgot about him (as much as I could forget about him).

Years later, my mother told me the story.

Dad built a guest room on one end of the shop. Grandpa and Grandma Melrose stayed there one spring when they came to visit. One morning, a rabid ground squirrel appeared in the shop, chattering hungrily at them. Grandpa Melrose freaked out and killed the squirrel with the heel of his shoe wielded in his hand. Who wants to get rabies, anyway?

Then he told my parents about it, worried about how to dispose of the body. They looked at each other and then at him and said, “Don’t tell Jackie. That was her pet, Chipper. He wasn’t rabid – he just woke up from hibernation.”

Poor Grandpa Melrose went to his grave with that on his conscience!!!

I’m glad they waited a few years to tell me. I could see the macabre humor in it by the time they told me. I still cried.

I forgave my sister long ago.

I look at ground squirrels differently now, pretty much the same as I view moles and Gary, the Gopher, who has invaded our back yard. It was probably a bad thing for my husband to name the gopher. Eventually, it comes to a stand off between my prized peonies and the creature. My peonies will win, but I will mourn the passing of the creature we should never have given a Christian name to.

I loved Chipper.