Washington Square Park, 30 Oct 2006
That’s sort of the thing about the city: You never know what people are up to. Why, just this very minute a man broke out in a rather amateurish R&B song that I’m assuming started playing in his headphones or it might not have been so close to being on-key. What I found odd was that he’d been sitting quietly for fifteen minutes looking quite normal before leaping to his feet in song, which I suppose shouldn’t seem so abnormal to me by now. Maybe I should give Manhattan my 4th Street rendition of that song by The Killers that I like so much…
A bit over an hour ago, there was a young woman (or can I say “old girl”?) sitting across from me at a different location in the park. I had my head buried in a rather bland novel when I heard her screaming, “Get the fuck away from it! It’s mine! Put it down!” Naturally, I looked up, expecting to see her jerk of a boyfriend (that was rude; I’m sure the unlucky chap is very nice and just a little more desperate than I am) thumbing through her journal or maybe even one of the homeless men collecting her empty water bottle to make his daily quota (five cents is five cents). Instead, I saw a fiesty little squirrel facing off over a large coffee cup. It didn’t look terribly cute; it stood on its hind legs, hands in the air as though it was ready to start throwing punches if she kept on that way (a threat I wouldn’t have opposed). It certainly was a spunky little bugger and if it wasn’t against my religion, I’d swear that at one point it even called its nemesis a “bitch” (probably not without some accuracy). It was clear that the “old girl” was pathetically losing this fight, as she continued to scream at the squirrel about how her coffee didn’t belong to it. An old man attempted to explain to her that the squirrel didn’t understand, to which she replied, “I don’t care! It’s my coffee and it has no right to take it!” The squirrel, it seems, didn’t agree with her.
To further its threats, the squirrel lept onto the woman’s bag and began to rummage through her belongings, though it was unclear if the squirrel was a boy with poor etiquette (we typically know better than to go through a woman’s purse) or a girl who was in need of some feminine attention and was really just looking for a favor. Either way, the invasion or privacy prompted a piercing scream as though the damn thing had just sacrificed her first-born child in a ritualistic and bloody display atop the Grimaldi statue. Apparently not finding what it was looking for, the squirrel began to get angry.
Leaping through the air like a tiny superhero, the bushy-tailed rodent landed, ninja-style, on the pavement facing the woman who reeled in fairly considerable horror even though she had an easy five-feet on her rival. She screamed again, louder (good Lord, she had a healthy set of pipes) and began to hastily and irrationally deal out profanities. This seemed to please the squirrel as it smiled and scampered off victoriously, laughing maniacally (something like a chipmunk on nitrous, I believe). What was most odd was that the woman did not act defeated. Instead, she insisted that the animal had been awfully mean and that they should teach park animals to behave more courteously than that (I believe she was an NYU left-winger). She then gathered her things and began to leave. Just before she passed by me, she put a cell phone to her ear and, upon connecting with someone, said, “Do you know what just happened to me? This fucking squirrel…”
Personally, I’m not sure I would have shared that story with anyone. Not even my mother.