Suki the Magnificent

 “…I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.”
(Whittaker Chambers)
 

How I mourned the disappearance of Suki the Magnificent.  The only one of his foster litter who hung around after release, the one who quickly learned from my late, beloved Eleanor the carefully-guarded secrets of successful windowsill begging, he was truly a character whose daily visits were always a bright amusement.  But as the lengthening days of May became weeks then became months without his furry presence I was forced to come to terms with the fact that, like Eleanor before him the previous fall, he was really and truly gone.  To my still-aching heart it was too soon after Eleanor’s last visit, he was only 6 years old…the sadness was unspeakable and tears fell in silence every time I ventured out back.  It was months before I finally stopped calling for him; often it felt as if somehow I’d failed.

Suki was a successful release but through the ensuing years he somehow lost a third of his tail and then inexplicably lost the sight in his right eye.  None of this slowed him down, though; he still showed up for handouts nearly every day.  As Eleanor had shown him, if we didn’t see him at one window he would make sure we’d hear him climbing on the window screen of another; early on he once chewed right through the screen in order to come inside and eat out of a dish filled with shelled nuts that was sitting on the kitchen counter.  Most often he simply parked his furry butt on the indoor side of the kitchen windowsill to make sure he and he alone would get a full ration of all the best stuff we had to offer.  This was not exactly the most pleasant experience during winter’s bitter chill for we, his human friends, but it was obviously a welcome respite for Suki.

As hard as it was to realize I’d said my last goodbye to Eleanor, I knew she was old and she’d clearly shown us all the signs of being ready to take her leave but Suki was younger and still in relatively good shape so I’d often wonder just what had happened to cause him to forsake what he’d always taken advantage of as being the best of both the wild and captive worlds.  All the times I’d simultaneously coaxed and scolded him back across the street now haunted me; as savvy as he was, had some heedless juggernaut caught him on his blind side unawares?  Had one of the red-tailed hawks found that blind side to be to their advantage?  The possibilities were endless and just as endlessly painful to consider so as quickly as such thoughts would come I would as quickly try to push them away.

With the passing of Time inevitably comes a modicum of adjustment and so eventually we learned to live without either Eleanor or Suki marking the hours of each day for us.  As winter fell and the days shortened and the holidays approached, we kept the feeder full and watched as our bushy-tailed visitors grew fat and their coats grew thick.  A couple days shy of Christmas I spotted a fox squirrel out back in search of something to eat in the afternoon’s fast-waning light so quickly gathered up one last ration of nuts and biscuits.  As I approached the feeder, the squirrel looked at me intently through the gloaming and for a moment I was quite unaware of why.

Then it hit me.

It was Suki!  He leaned out of the feeder, reaching determinedly with a paw as I raised the food dish up to empty it onto the platform.  Grabbing a nut, he sat down to eat it eagerly.  All I could do was stare.  I took full measure and, sure enough, there was the shortened tail, there was the blind right eye and the familiar, striking, prematurely white muzzle.

At long last and against all seeming odds, the most unexpected and delightful Christmas present of all, our boy had come home.

As winter began to firmly stake its hold in earnest, Suki again became a more regular visitor to the feeder and began again, though far less frequently, to venture to the kitchen windowsill in search of more personal handouts.  Some of his reticence would be explained by the loss of most a toe on his right hind foot; an awkward and painful situation we monitored as best we could and one that eventually healed over on its own.  More serious became a large gash that appeared on Suki’s groin, in the natural crease where his right hind leg meets his body.  How he received either one of these injuries remains a mystery; Suki won’t talk about it and imagination provides little explanation other than perhaps something like a very bad pass over the top of a fence while escaping from danger seen almost too late with his limited vision.  With the squirrel feeder at eye-level, it was easy enough for me to get a good look at the gash if I was able to intercept our furry friend and as the days went by the wound was getting worse instead of better.  During a windowsill visit I was able to get some ointment onto it but whatever Suki did the rest of each day was not helping the situation.  When it reached the point the skin grew so split I could peer inside and see things you really don’t want to get a good look at I began to worry constantly and consider how to trap the boy so he could receive proper care.

 In the end, it didn’t take any effort at all.  Despite a couple of failed attempts to coax him from the feeder into a pet carrier and one failed attempt to coax him inside onto the kitchen windowsill with the idea of closing the window behind him -a failure that found me going outside on a cold winter afternoon in hopes of figuring out where he was nesting and ended with me watching him slowly make his way down the sidewalk, a memory that to this day makes my heart ache with its typical fox squirrel toddling bravado covering up what must have been enormous pain and discomfort- one afternoon Suki came begging on the back patio.  I simply opened the storm door, showed him I had fresh shelled walnuts and invited him to come inside.  He hesitated only a moment and as he sat on the doormat munching his goodie, I gently closed the door behind him.

Of course being inside is not the same as being safely inside so I quickly closed the door to the rest of the house to avoid a chase that held potential for great damage to squirrel, humans and stuff and pondered how getting Suki into the still-ready-and-waiting carrier was going to play out.  He is a smart squirrel and knew he should go out the same way he came in but he soon realized the glass door wasn’t going to budge.  Unlike other squirrels, this didn’t seem to faze him; after a few minutes he decided to look around the room for another way out and when he went between the side of the bed and the wall, I set the carrier down in front of him and even more calmly than he’d entered the house, he entered the carrier.  I closed its door behind him and breathed a big sigh of relief.

He continued to calmly cooperate through his recovery.  The first few days he did nothing but sleep in his carrier; waking only long enough to eat and, encouraged by chin and neck scratches, to stretch out on his back while I treated the big, deep wound on his groin.  I suppose since he was raised here some long-forgotten memories from babyhood lent their subtle reassurance he was safe, that early trust thereafter reinforced by our years of peaceful interactions.

Regardless the reasons why he was so accepting, Suki’s healing progressed quite uneventfully.  As winter slowly turned into spring, Suki was again as whole as he would ever be.  I look at this prematurely white-muzzled, middle-aged fox squirrel missing part of his tail and a toe and the sight in one eye as he sprawls in his fleece-lined sleeping box in a big cage, belly-up with all four paws in the air in that quintessential “dead fox squirrel” pose of utter contentment and raise a silent prayer of thanks my boy is home at last.