That flying squirrel did not break my new refrigerator

By Loretta Humble/Around the Town

That flying squirrel did not break my new refrigerator. No way. But due to some of my previous run-ins with nature’s creatures, maybe you could forgive me for taking a minute to wonder.

I have never been one for throwing money around. I live in a little old house that I moved to my portion of the family farm and fixed up. Then I furnished it with used furniture. I totally love it. It reminds me of the house where I was born right across the road from here. But I don’t want my kitchen to look like Mama’s. I like stainless steel appliances, and in particular, I love a huge wonderful refrigerator/freezer that looks like the refrigerated section of a fancy grocery store inside, but no way could I stand to part with cost of a new one of those.

The fridge I had was okay. I first saw it on Unclutterer. It was stainless, but middle-aged and middle-sized. Then I found the wonderful one. Used, but huge and gorgeous, and so cheap I grabbed it quick. After I got it home, I discovered it had a couple of peculiarities, but I loved it anyhow.

Then one night it woke us up making a loud roaring noise. We thought unplugging it for a couple of minutes might reset a fan or something. To do that we had to pull it out of its slot, and when we did, there was something over in the back corner. Dust bunnies? A dead mouse? We poked it with a broom and it jumped. We got a flashlight and looked closer and saw it had weirdly large eyes and a bushy tail. We moved the fridge out some more so we could get to it. At that point it decided to make a run for it. It was fast. It ran across the kitchen and I thought I lost it until I spotted a small lump on the table under the vinyl tablecloth. Cleverly, I thought, I put a clear glass bowl over the lump and slipped a thin flat cookie sheet under the tablecloth in the lump area. Then I pulled the tablecloth out from between them. Voila! We were looking into the big eyes of a half-grown flying squirrel. Here I was in the middle of the night with my fridge going crazy, holding a very nervous flying squirrel in captivity. Of course there was no connection other than the fridge noise probably saved his life, but it was funny to think about.

I knew there have been flying squirrels around here, because sadly, I’ve seen a couple of dead ones. But this was my first face to face encounter, which I believe was thanks to the cat. The little thing was so cute I would have liked to have kept him around a little while for show and tell but we did the right thing and took him to the woods and wished him well.

As for the fridge, after a couple more outbursts, it seems to have healed itself. It has been a couple of months now and it seems to be fine. And I got something to write about. My life is usually pretty boring, but wild animals do help me out pretty often.

One day I discovered our ancient border collie, Deuce, lying in the middle of the living room floor, tenderly licking a tiny baby rabbit. Best I can tell, the cat must have brought this one in too. Shelly who lives next door took it home to bottle feed it. He has grown up to be a fine young rabbit. They were afraid if they turned him loose he couldn’t make it after being people-raised, so Douglas built him a huge outdoor cage where he seems to live a happy enough life.

Then there was the turtle I saved who tried to kill me. I picked him up out of the middle of the road on my way to town and put him in my back floorboard till I could find a safe pasture to put him in. . As I approached the railroad crossing, I tried to brake. I couldn’t. The car kept going, heading down town, towards the highway and disaster. I swerved the car around the corner towards the Baptist Church parking lot, where I finally had the sense to turn the key off, and drove round and round till it finally quit. Only then did I figure out that the turtle was the culprit, having lodged himself under the brake pedal. I was scared to death, but as soon as I recovered I knew he had given me a column.

Then there was the day, when standing at the information desk at the big Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Dallas, I put my hand in my purse, felt something squishy, and looked down to see a toad frog peeking out at me. This was so amazing I had to tell the people standing around there that there was a frog in my purse. I could guess how he got there, but that was not nearly as interesting as the fact that a frog went to Dallas with me. I laughed out loud because I knew immediately I had a column titled “There was a Frog in my Purse.”

The blessings just keep coming.