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Oh, Nuts! An Ill-Timed Run-In With Rusty
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To my dismay, we were drawing some attention from a nearby clutch of tourists. I guess even on the Mall it isn't every day you see a woman with a squirrel in her purse. The crowd eyed me suspiciously. I groaned silently. Could this possibly get any worse?
"Look, mate," said the man, eagerly displaying a camera. "I've got it all here on video!"
It turned out that the Australians had been not just watching Rusty but filming him. My new friend displayed the footage for the crowd on the camera's swing-out screen.
There was the squirrel eating out of the woman's hand, and then he went off for a drink, and -- "Ewww!" moaned the tourists. Several glared at me.
Others, however, were giving sidelong looks to the couple. After all, they had come halfway around the planet and they were . . . filming a squirrel. I was just starting to pick up on this vibe when it hit me: marsupials. They don't have squirrels in Australian cities, they have -- what? Wombats or something. So this was like a nature show for the Aussies, sort of an inverse Crocodile Hunter.
The woman turned back to the kiosk.
With an expression of deep professional concern, the Smokey in the booth -- well, he had his ranger hat on -- examined Rusty. "Looks pretty bad," he opined darkly.
Thank you, Mark Trail.
But he gamely went through the phone book and called animal shelters all around the metro area and, incredibly, found one open at 6 o'clock on a Friday.
"It's in Rockville," the ranger said without blinking an eye.
"That's, um, a ways," I said lamely, unwilling to disappoint the Aussies by telling them Rockville might be two hours away in rush-hour traffic. Also, I was getting a strong sense of impending doom given Rusty's now rigid tail. Frankly, I wanted to be gone before Rusty went to the Big Oak Tree in the Sky, because I didn't know how my new friends would react.
However, no sooner had they stepped to the curb than a cab pulled up. I gave them $20, all that I had with me, and wished them luck. The last I saw of Rusty was his tail, still poking out of the woman's purse.
