Quirky Monday: Shake Your Bushy Tail(And Stay Away From Me)

Ok, y'all we're going to play a game.

 Riddle me this:

I am small.

I am brown.

I chatter in the trees.

What am I?

Give up?

It's a squirrel.

AKA the only animal I am still utterly terrified of.

No joke.

Spiders I can handle; mice, snakes and rats are pushing it, but I can deal.

Squirrels?

Nope.

Not happening.

Not ever.

Period.

The end.

This is not cute. This is panic inducing.

There's even a word for it: Sciurophobia. I'm not kidding, that's what you call being ridiculously, irrationally afraid of squirrels.

And it is all Dr. Quinn's fault.

For those who don't know, Dr Quinn was a tv show that aired back in the 90s on CBS about a female doctor(Jane Seymour) who moved from Boston to Colorado in the 19th century. My great-grandpa used to watch it all the time, and he usually had it on when we'd go over for Christmas or birthdays or whatever. One of my few memories with him is sitting in his house with him in his recliner and me on the floor or in a chair near the tv and watching this pioneer show that I loved(and only found out the title of much later).

Anyhoo, one episode of this show had a rabid dog as part of the plot, and I was a little nervous about dogs and rabies and things, and I happened to voice that fear in the hearing of my uncle Paul.

Now, Paul is an outdoorsman to the core, so he knows about things like this and he looked over at me and said(as near as I can remember and with the best of intensions I'm sure): 

"You know, it's hard for dogs to get rabies--"

"It's usually squirrels."

Now, I don't know if he was totally joking at the time, nor did I really care. The only thing my seven-year-old brain could think of was that my family went camping a lot.

Camping outside.

In the mountains.

With  squirrels.

So many squirrels that there were signs like this:

Cue internal mini-panic attack which has plagued me ever since.

Following that nice little tidbit of information I lived in certain fear that I would meet a gory end at the hands--well, paws-- of a vicious rabid squirrel.

If we went camping, I stayed close to the fire, because squirrels were smart enough not to get burned(apparently).

When we went up the canyon, if there were squirrels in the parking lot, I stayed in the car until they went away(and got  various impatient cries of "Chelsea, just get out of the car!" from various relatives).

Girl's Camp was one of the most stressful weeks of my life simply because the furry monsters were everywhere. And they were going to kill me.

Two years ago my family went to Park City on vacation, and my mom and I were riding up one of the lifts and I saw a squirrel ten feet below me and nearly had a heart attack(and highly amused my mom).

Scuriophobia is not going to go away. I know that. But it can be managed, if I work on it long and hard enough. I'm not as vocal about it as a used to be, so that's progress.

Meantime, it amuses the family, and to some extent myself. I mean, I'm not in a Stephen King horror story, so it's not like I really will die by random rabid squirrel attack.

Plus, it's a fun word to say. Sciurophobia.

How's that for quirky?