As I reached the top of the ridge, right before the descent, I spotted a small animal by the side of the trail. I was biking slowly, and the strange thing was that as I approached, the animal \u2014 a squirrel, I could see now \u2014 didn\u2019t run away. It almost seemed to come towards me. I put my bike down. As I approached on foot, it looked up at me and took a shy step in my direction. I couldn\u2019t believe it. I slowly put my hand down to touch it, and it didn\u2019t budge, instead looking up at me with huge eyes, eyes that belonged to a very young squirrel.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Not a baby, but an adolescent, perhaps. It wasn\u2019t long before I picked him up. At that point, other passers-by were watching too. This little guy was disarmingly cute. He quickly found his way inside my loose-fitting sweater and wouldn\u2019t come back out. It dawned on me that he might have been cold. I noticed after a few minutes that his muzzle was covered in something that looked like dried mud. Other than that, he seemed in good health. After a while, my friend Ruben called me on my cell phone. I told him what was going on and he asked \u201cwell, have you named him yet?\u201d \u201cNo, I just found him five minutes ago!\u201d I replied. \u201cWell I think you should give him a nice Jewish name,\u201d he said. Inspiration struck: \u201cHow about Ruben?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n My newly-christened Ruben was becoming increasingly friendly, but I couldn\u2019t keep him, obviously, and the sun was starting to get low. So I put him down. Only thing was, he wouldn\u2019t leave. He came right back to my feet, put his paws on my shoes, and looked up imploringly. I started to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Clearly this was a young squirrel that had somehow lost its mother, and it had imprinted on me as a possible new protector. But I\u2019m a touring musician! The last thing I can do is keep a squirrel. I called an animal rescue center in Brooklyn \u2014 it was right before 7pm. The guy on the other end said \u201cput him back. He\u2019s what we call a dumb baby: he hasn\u2019t learned to be afraid of humans yet.\u201d So I put him back again. But he kept coming back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The fact that he was utterly irresistible didn\u2019t make this any easier. Other people came and went, giving their little pieces of advice: \u201cif I were you I\u2019d keep away from that animal \u2014 you never know what diseases it might be carrying\u201d. A quick search on my phone gave the official word back: small rodents, in the United States, are not considered a rabies risk. One couple came by and the husband said he\u2019d grown up on a farm and had had abandoned squirrel babies come up to him a number of times, but his dad usually forbade him to keep them. He had raised one or two, though, feeding them milk and \u2014 he said \u2014 cat food. The only essential thing, he said, was to keep the animal hydrated. Make sure it drinks, and it’ll live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again I tried to put Ruben back. This time, he climbed about 4 feet up the closest tree, but just as I thought our story might be ending, he turned around and ran right back to my feet. Again the imploring eyes; I picked him back up. I was alone and in a true quandary: I definitely, no way, could have a pet squirrel. I was a fiercely independent guy. I did manage to water my plants, and I did manage to keep the humidifier in my piano full most of the time, but other than that I had very few real responsibilities outside of my music. And I liked it that way. But this little guy just wouldn\u2019t leave me alone, and the more time I spent with him \u2014 perhaps 45 minutes at this point \u2014, the more I liked him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as I was standing there with Ruben in my arms, a woman about my age appeared. She was in running gear, staring up at a branch hanging in mid-air, suspended by some kind of string attached to a tree above. Some unknown sequence of events, perhaps involving a helium balloon, had led to this. I asked her if she knew anything about squirrels, which must have come across as an odd pick-up line, until she saw that I was actually holding a squirrel in my arms. No, she said. But her curiosity was piqued and she loved holding him. We started talking. After a while I asked her what she did for a job. \u201cI\u2019m an actress, she said, and I teach French\u201d. \u201cAh, tu parles fran\u00e7ais?\u201d, I asked. Her English had been totally unaccented till then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She answered in perfect French, only one of perhaps five people I\u2019ve met in my life who speaks unaccented English and French. It turned out that she had grown up in Paris, not too far from where I grew up, on the eastern side. Her dad was American, her mom French. And then there was this: we had both gone to the same high school, a big one on the eastern edge of Paris called H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Boucher, and \u2014 we disbelievingly realized \u2014 had actually overlapped there by one whole year. Her name was Justine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was just too much. Too many unlikely events for one day. It was dark by now. I needed to put Ruben back. So I climbed over the fence separating the trail from the woods, walked ten feet in, and put him down. I walked back to the trail. Ten seconds later he was at my feet again. \u201cYou\u2019re going to have to take him home, you know\u201d, said Justine. Let\u2019s make sure he doesn\u2019t want to stay here, I said. I climbed back over the fence, Justine handed Ruben to me, and I walked a good fifty feet into the woods. I walked back, fast, to the trail. But something made me want to make sure that he was going to be all right. If his mother had abandoned him, after all, if he had fallen out of his nest onto his nose (which would possibly explain the caked mud covering his muzzle), he might not make it alone. Justine and I waited for about a minute, and sure enough, there he was again. He had followed me back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow about we have a drink while I decide what to do with this guy?\u201d We walked to the east side of the park, to my neighborhood, Lefferts Gardens, and walked into Lincoln Park Tavern, with Ruben hidden under my sweater. As we sat down, I took him out and held him in my hands. He was incredibly docile. Truth is, he seemed exhausted. A waitress came over, saw the little animal and got the manager, who promptly shoed us out of the restaurant, explaining that the whole place could be shut down if a rodent were found inside. But she wouldn\u2019t let us leave without having us take a picture of her with Ruben. Turns out she\u2019d wanted to hold a squirrel in her hands since she was a little girl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only other option was my apartment. We stopped at the local bodega on the way and I bought an eye dropper and some cat food. At my place, I found a cardboard box full of packing paper and put him in there. Then I emptied the eye dropper, washed it out and filled it with water. Ruben was hesitant at first, but he drank, at least a little. He curled up into a ball and fell asleep. Over tea, Justine told me about her parents, both painters, now divorced with her dad in New York, her mom still in Paris, and she showed me their work online. Both heavyweights. Her younger brother, too, in art school in Chicago and doing some really compelling work. Some of his hand-drawn images looked algorithmic and reminded me of some of the math-based line-drawings I\u2019d made with code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before long, it was time for Justine to leave. I walked her back through the park and brought Ruben with me. She said I had to keep him for at least one night. How many people get to say they brought a squirrel home? But I wanted to try putting him back one more time. I figured that if he scampered off, it meant that he knew he\u2019d survive the night. Perhaps all he’d needed was a little warmth, and he was now okay. I walked Justine to the west side, and on my way back, tried to set Ruben free again, an act that felt like a well-rehearsed routine at this point. He wouldn\u2019t have it. I brought him home again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dantepfer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/IMG_5423-scaled.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n