Oh, Nuts! An Ill-Timed Run-In With Rusty

By Kevin Quin
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, April 28, 2008

It wasn't my fault that I ran over the squirrel.

I'm a nature lover, not a squirrel runner-overer. But squirrels have some kind of lemminglike gear in their brains that urges them to hurl themselves in front of moving vehicles at every opportunity they get, and by the time I got my hands on the brakes it was --

Oh, wait. Did I forget to mention that I was riding my bike?

I'm really a pretty placid biker. I shun the aggressive yellow-jersey-and-spandex thing. There's enough pain in the world already without middle-aged men sporting elastic shorts.

So, really, it wasn't my fault.

Admittedly, I was going at a pretty good clip for a 40-something lycraphobe when that squirrel darted across the path about 15 feet in front of me by the pond near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Had I hit my brakes I would have skidded to a halt right beside the animal, trapping it between me and the water. So I kept going in the hope it would freeze in place and I would zoom by without incident.

But little Rusty must have heard the call to go toward the light, because just as I rode up, he lunged. Straight through the spinning spokes of my front wheel.

I braked hard, but the wheel tossed the squirrel into the air. Its furry body whacked against my helmet, a bristly tail for an instant right in my face. When I came to a stop, I turned around to find the squirrel, certain it would be horribly mangled.

I wasn't far wrong. It was crawling slowly toward the woods, pulling its limp hindquarters and spastically flicking tail behind it.

As I stood guiltily over the injured animal, two enraged bystanders rushed up. The first, a man, put his face right into mine.

"Didn't you see him?" he screamed.

Oh, just great, I thought. Not only do I flatten a poor squirrel, but an angry mob gathers to confront me.

Before I could answer, the second bystander, a woman, emptied her purse, picked up the wounded squirrel in her bare hands (in my head, my mother's voice was saying, "But you don't know where that's been!") and slid it headfirst into her bag. The squirrel's russet tail stuck straight up, like a twitching, furry umbrella handle.

"Poor baby!" the woman cooed in an Australian accent. "We'll take care of you!"

As it turned out, poor Rusty could not have fallen into more qualified hands.

The man, his rage now somewhat abated, turned back to me.

"We're members of the Animal Rescue League of Sydney," he said.

"You're kidding," I stammered, unable to believe my bad luck. A million squirrels in Washington, and I had to run over the one that was under observation by international animal rights activists.

"We're wildlife rescue technicians," the man continued in a take-charge tone. "We'll need to get this squirrel to an animal rescue center right away."

I suspected that "rescue" really wasn't in the cards for Rusty, but the situation was literally out of my hands. Still feeling terrible about the accident and none too sure of the emotional state of my new acquaintances, I decided to follow their lead.

We went to the ranger kiosk near the Lincoln Memorial. I pushed my bike while they carried the squirrel purse and other assorted gear.

If this were Sydney, the woman fumed, the animal rescue workers would already be here!

At the kiosk, the Aussies explained they were looking for an animal shelter to tend to an injured squirrel. The woman brandished her purse, Rusty's still animated tail jutting up from it.

"He ran the poor bugger over with his bicycle!" she exclaimed, pointing at me.

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.

But I know when it happened. Ten minutes later, after crossing the river, I stupidly tried to ride across the GW Parkway. I failed to jump the far curb, and as I flew over the handlebars as gracefully as a load of sandbags, one thought went through my mind.

Rusty's Revenge.

As I lay stunned and humiliated on the shoulder of the road, the Human Rescue League appeared in the form of a jogger.

"Sir, I'm an emergency medical technician," he said briskly. "Are you injured?"

At least he left me some dignity and didn't try to stuff me into a purse.

I declined the EMT's offer of an ambulance ride, and somehow managed to get home without doing any more damage.

But somewhere in Australia there's a permanent record of my ineptitude. And I'm sure that when the animal rights activists get irate after a few too many pints of Foster's, sooner or later somebody growls, "Oi, Sheila! Break out the video of that bloody Yank!" And little Rusty romps again, until he's flattened by the vicious biker in the absurdly ugly plaid shorts.

Those baggy shorts, by the way, are how you can recognize me if you happen to find yourself on the Mall on a mild weekday afternoon near the Lincoln Memorial. And if you're a fellow biker and you find yourself behind me, stay alert.

I brake for animals.