animal oddities

Today I received a text from Eldest. That isn't odd in and of itself. The substance of the text was ... different.

You see, Eldest and my father are on their annual bike ride. They do roughly 300 miles in five days. They camp out at night. This is the fourth (and probably last) ride. It is really good for them. It is the reason they are so close. But it is killing my dad this year. He's not saying that, but I hear it in his voice. It's different this year.

But that's not the point of this post.

The point is the text I received. It said, "Guess what?"

I bit. I said, "What?"

"Squirrel. I was just sitting here reading and a squirrel ran into my lap and stood up on it's back legs and it looked me in the eyes. Then it ran away."

"Wow," I said, "really?"

"Really. Then I got up cuz I was hungry and now it's following me."

"Can I bring the squirrel home?"

That's when I quit responding. I've got a puppy. I don't need a squirrel too.

Anybody else find that story amazing? And odd? And ... even though truth is not her forte, I believe her. And here's why...

When she was 11 months, Eldest had a relationship with a hummingbird. We lived in California. She would stand at the big front picture window, filling it with her grimy, baby-handprints and stick her nose up against the window to look out at the people walking. While she was standing there, a hummingbird would fly up and hover right at the level of her nose on the other side of the glass. Repeatedly. And should would stand there frozen and stare at that bird for whole minutes. Whole minutes, when she was nothing but a baby.

I always expected to see fairies fly out of the garden toward her.

It seemed very tinkerbell. And magical. And somehow, it meant something.

She's always been a bit magical to me. Magical and tragical.

When she was about 18 months old, a neighborhood cat came and to our back door and they could chat. Specifically, she would toddle up to the screen door, the cat would rise up on her hind legs, putting her paws on the door and right as they got eye-to-eye, Eldest would run away from the door screaming, "Titty bo! Titty bo!" (Which my father pointed out equates to, "Kitty go! Kitty go!" They've always understood each other extremely well.) But then she'd head back to the door and repeat the adventure. Again and again and again.

When she was three or four, she was bitten by a swan. We told her only princesses were bitten by swans. She believed us.

So, really. I believe the squirrel sat in her lap and looked her in the eye.