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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

Squirrels rarely fall from trees.

I came out of a church in Algona, Iowa.

I was hurrying to my car to get it in line for the funeral procession to the cemetery.

That was when a squirrel fell from a tree. I took it as a definite sign that a squirrel had fallen from a tree.

The squirrel hit the ground with a resounding thud. I’m sure it tried to use its bushy tail as a parachute, but if it did, it worked as well as a parachute Wile E. Coyote might have ordered from Acme.

Was it injured? Sick? Had it taken the passing of my loved one that hard? Had it been moving faster than its feet could keep up with? Was it being chased by another squirrel? Was it a poor arboreal acrobat? Had it suffered a debilitating foot cramp? It hit the lawn, took a couple of seconds to regain its senses, and then scurried away.

Someone told me, it might have been a character on the old TV series “F Troop,” that when a moose eats an acorn, a squirrel falls from a tree.

It wasn’t wearing a safety helmet. There’s a lesson for us all: If you’re going to be jumping from limb to limb in the canopy, wear a helmet.

Several years later, I canoed the Missouri River. I’d saved money on a cruise. I’m a terrible paddler — my mind wanders to all the beauty of nature that surrounds my float. I slept in a tiny tent each night where the Lewis and Clark Expedition had camped, read from their journal each day and saw few others except for the friends accompanying me on the journey.

Everything was nearly copacetic. Montana was indeed Big Sky Country. There was as much blue as there was sky. I was paddling at a leisurely pace when I came upon a beaver that was busy as a beaver picking up sticks. I’d played Pick Up Sticks (Jack Straws), a classic children’s game in which 41 sticks were dumped out of a tube into a loose pile. Players took turns attempting to remove a stick from the jumbled pile without disturbing any others. If a player succeeded, that player’s turn continued. If a player moved another stick, the next player took a turn.

The busy beaver might have been perfecting its skills for a big Pick Up Sticks tournament taking place a week later at the Beaver Lodge.

I carried a cheap camera that would have been at home as a prize in the bottom of a box of Cracker Jack. I made the executive decision to take photos of the big critter.

I paddled close enough to get an award-winning photo with my dime-a-dozen camera. The beaver ignored me as it made sounds as if it were moaning the theme song from “Leave it to Beaver.”

I paddled away, leaving the big rodent to its own devices.

Then I decided I needed one more photo. I do that regularly. I paddled back. I got too close. The beaver slapped the water with its tail — a warning signal. An invitation to scram. As I snapped the last photo, it flashed its orange teeth my way. This was followed by a beaver-canoe chase worthy of being in a movie featuring high-speed chases.

A beaver generally weighs 35 to 70 pounds. I read of one that weighed 110 pounds. The one that chased me dwarfed any Minnesota Viking offensive lineman.

It challenged me to a fistfight. I escaped by the skin of its orange teeth.

Another day, my mother asked me to drop papers off at her lawyer’s office. I parked my car near that place of business. When I turned off its engine, I heard a strange yowl.

I was used to strange noises coming from under my car’s hood, which I quickly popped open. The yowling had come from a stowaway, my mother’s cat. With an impressive puffy tail, the cat jumped out and ran away like a roadrunner. I couldn’t find the fugitive feline.

In those three days separated by years, I learned to wear a helmet when climbing trees, not to anger large rodents, and never take a cat to see a lawyer.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.