Thursday, December 3, 2009

A Short Story that was brought to Nana's mind by a video clip that Papa found on the Purina Website

(But which now, alas and alack, cannot be found again, or at least not by yours truly. But the story is still worth telling.)

Nana's mother-- who is my only living Grandmother, so I'll call her Grandmother here-- was born in 1926, and grew up during the depths of the depression. They ate a lot of inexpensive foods, including what her older brother could shoot with his '22*.

One day, Harry shot a squirrel, but he didn't realize that it was a mama squirrel and that there was a baby still in the nest. When he realized what he had done, he brought the baby squirrel home to take care of it. The only trouble was, they had a cat, and baby squirrels are enough like mice that they were sure that the cat would eat it. They tried and tried to keep the cat and the baby squirrel separated, but finally they gave up. It was just too hard.

Well, the cat had had kittens recently, and she was still nursing them; and she let that baby squirrel come up and nurse right along side them!

The video in question was of a bunch of different odd animal adoptions, including a mama cat nursing a couple of squirrels. If anyone finds it and wants to put it in the comments, please have at!

*Evidently, Grandmother still has that gun. But, if you know Grandmother's attitudes about getting rid of things, you will be 100% not surprised by this fact. I almost wonder if it's the one that my uncle used to shoot that rattlesnake that one night, but that's a different story...