I don’t even think the driver saw the interspecies melee.
…maybe I should back up.
So Trashmouth was getting his ass beat by the Mugshot and the FedExers (save for the Littlest Corvid, who was making off with ill-gotten gains), while Boxnoggin and I were staring in utter disbelief (me) and quivering incomprehension (the dog). A giant shiny black SUV was creeping up the hill, half in the parking lane, and as it got closer I could peer through the privacy tinting to see…well, if not to see what the hell, to at least make a guess at it.
Behind the wheel of this tall, waxed, and probably still reeking of new-car chemicals pedestrian-murdering machine was a woman holding a cell phone–but not to her ear, oh no. Instead, she was staring into its face as if she’d just found her soulmate, and as the gods are my witness I believe she was livestreaming. Her makeup was truly Instagram-incredible–contoured to the max–even through a rain-dotted windshield and the faint glow of foglamps, and her lovingly lined and lipsticked mouth was moving quite a few miles-per-hour faster than the vehicle. To call her a “Karen” would probably be an insult to other perfectly lovely people bearing that name but also incredibly, deeply accurate. She looked like the sort of lady who would run a waitress’s ass off with this and that before leaving less than a dollar tip or, worse, one of those Jesus Tickets.
Perhaps my description is needlessly cruel, but one thing’s for certain, my friends: Bitch wasn’t looking at the road.
In the passenger seat slouched a what was probably a middle-schooler with their own electronic brick held up like a shield, staring at its bright face with something approaching rapturous boredom. All this reached my horrified brain just as that piece of overworked grey matter finished totting up physics, relative speed, and other conditions, returning the verdict that Boxnoggin and I were safe enough but the battlefield in the parking lane was about to undergo a drastic readjustment of forces.
All this took far less time to occur than to type. Anyway, the SUV crept inexorably forward. The Littlest Corvid hadn’t even reached the other side of the street, my horrified “JAYSUS CHRIST,” was still ringing in the drizzle-damp, and Boxnoggin’s tail began another tentative wag. He was on the cusp of realizing just how he could make this situation worse, which in normal times would lead to him plunging directly upon that course of action.
He never got the chance.
I don’t know which of the Fed-Exers noticed approaching doom first, but someone yelled “SCATTER!” in Linguae Corvidae, and there was an explosion of feathers. The entire crew took off pell-mell in any direction that seemed advisable, more than one performing a last-minute beak-plunge to gain a peanut. I do know Mugshot was the last to leave–as befits a good commander–because she didn’t have much time to gain altitude and the path she chose was directly aimed at my face.
Or so it felt like at the time.
A snap of wings, a brush of rainbreath, and the crow skimmed over my head as I ducked reflexively. Fortunately I did not hit wet pavement, as a youth misspent in bar brawls might have rendered both advisable and instinctive, but I can’t claim any prize for that grace for the simple reason that Boxnoggin was in the way and I didn’t want to flatten my dog.
The SUV rolled majestically on. Its passing breeze arrived a few heartbeats after Mugshot buzzed me, and I got a good look at the kid in the passenger seat as well as Karen Driver, who did not deign to look at the road or even notice I was staring through the window. My estimation of trajectory, speed, and relative mass was indubitably and thankfully correct, as the vehicle continued on for about a quarter of a block before its right-hand front tire finally kissed the kerb.
I can only imagine the flurry of activity inside the car at that point, because it swerved back out into the roadway and sped up, vanishing over the crest of the slight hill. Presumably the driver’s attention had been redirected, but I’m not betting on it. It occurred to me–the sort of inconsequential thought that happens during a disaster–that the kid was probably either late for school or had some kind of doctor’s appointment, since even though my own spawn are safely graduated I still know the school district’s morning schedules.
Having to dodge buses on morning runs will do that. Anyway, back to the story.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, in tones of surpassing wonder…and then I realized I hadn’t seen Trashmouth’s escape. Which provoked a wondering, “Did that bitch just kill my squirrel?”
Yes, friends and neighbours, I said that aloud, in public, after escaping both being flattened by Karen Driver and hit the head by a crow. Boxnoggin craned to look up at me, and his tail was now going furiously since if I was talking there was a prospect of treats, pets, or something new to stick his nose into as we sashayed onward.
I turned back to the road, and what do you think I saw?
Feathers. A lone cracked peanut shell. Slick drizzle-drenched pavement…
…and one dazed squirrel, whole and presumably unwounded since the clearance on that SUV was well above tree-rodent height. Trashmouth huddled amid the wreckage, for once too stunned to yell obscenities.
“Holy hell,” I breathed. Boxnoggin’s tail went harder, if that were possible. I only had a few seconds before he noticed the presence of a fuzzy-assed snack-sized foulmouth, and I found myself reaching for my coat’s peanut-pocket. “You furry idiot. You lucky little tree-shitting nincompoop.”
Box thought I was talking to him. Trashmouth fixed me with a beady sideways stare, and I’m not sure if he thought he had won a Pyrrhic victory–since, alas, all the Crunchy Nuts o’Discord were gone and he’d just been o’erpassed by the shadow of death–or if he’d been briefly scared into what passes for sanity among creatures of his ilk.
I tossed a peanut, and my aim was pretty accurate. It landed amid scattered feathers, and Trashmouth twitched. Boxnoggin’s head whipped around; sixty-five pounds worth of furry predator stiffened, ears perking. For a moment we were en tableaux: squirrel warrior, dumbass terrier-brained dog, and middle-aged woman undergoing heart palpitations despite her prefrontal cortex assuring the lizardbrain the SUV had indeed missed us entirely.
Then, the tension broke.
Trashmouth darted for the peanut. He had his prey in a twinkling and took off for safety, which in his just-rebooted little noggin was not across the street, oh no, because that would have been altogether too easy. Plus, he’d just been visited by the Shadow of Chevrolet Death out there, and the trees on the other side were probably forgotten in wake of that disturbing incident.
What this all adds up to is that, of course, the doughty dipshit streaked back the way he’d arrived, to what was now my left since I’d half-turned to see the SUV go uphill. Boxnoggin twitched, more out of surprise than the urge to chase (for once) and in a flash Trashmouth had leapt onto the mossy boulders of the embankment like Errol Flynn with his swash tightly buckled. He gained the top of the hill in a series of bounds, and stopped to glance back at us, his mouth full of peanut.
“MRPHLE-MRGH!” he yelled, and I didn’t need to know squirrel-ese to translate, no indeed. Then he scampered away, and I heard a scrabble of claws on the board fence at the top. A low-hanging cedar bough was briefly shaken, and I looked down at Boxnoggin, who for the second (or third) time that day was too stunned to chase something. I patted at my pockets, verified that the dog was okay–he wriggled with glee under a shower of pets–and made sure I was still wearing shoes, because these things almost always end with me shoeless and screaming.
This time I had my footwear on and (bonus!) had not been run over, so we were two to the good. Boxnoggin evinced much interest in the site of the fray, but I didn’t feel easy about standing in the street so I hauled him onward. thankfully, he completely forgot the whole thing since there was a fire hydrant about twenty steps away, one of a few he is absolutely dying to make the daily acquaintance of.
I was a little less lucky. It took a long while for my pulse to come down out of the red, and the morning run after I brought him home was almost entirely cortisol-fueled.
So we left the feather-strewn site of glorious victory and despair behind as a thin line of golden sunshine peeked through lowering clouds. Mugshot and her crew didn’t find us again until we left the park the next day, and it took a couple more days for Trashmouth to recover his usual volume and speed of shouted insults while running along the board fence. All in all, we escaped that incident rather lightly; I’m just glad the FedExers seemed to understand the SUV was wholly unconnected to me.
Instead, they seem to hold a certain loudmouth squirrel responsible for the loss of feathers. I swear they have it in for him, especially the Littlest Corvid–but that’s (say it with me) a whole ‘nother blog post.
Thus endeth the tale of Mugshot, Trashmouth, and the Crunchy Nuts o’Discord…
…until, that is, some-damn-thing else happens.