How the mailbox broke.

The strangest thing happened a few weeks ago.  This HUGE storm rolled in during the evening.  Thunder and lighting were everywhere.  The wind was howling.  All of the sudden a bolt of lightening hit the manhole in front of our mailbox.  The lid went flying and out of the hole flew 10 squirrels.  9 of them landed in the trees in front of our house and made it out safe, but one hit the mailbox as he shot out and was seriously injured.  I ran outside to find the squirrel just lying there, barely breathing, next to our broken mailbox.  Now what???

Thankfully Mr. Quirk, the squirrel translator who can speak squirrel and English was in town.  (The Russian squirrel translator would have been no good to me.)  He ran over as fast as he could.  As Mr. Quirk was frantically talking to the larger of the 9 squirrels that landed in the tree I waited to see what was going on.  It turns out that these 10 squirrels are a family.  The dad, Cornelius Stanley Kurmothapop, as I later found out while helping him fill out papers at the squirrel hospital, and his wife (who's name I never caught in all the excitement) and 8 squirrel children.  Mr. Quirk instructed me to get Cornelius to the squirrel hospital immediately.  He looked up the address using "Squoogle" and gave it to me.  Thankfully it was just north from our house on Route 59.


When I got there I had never seen anything like it.  A hospital just for squirrels, run by squirrels.  The doctors in their white coats and nurses in their blue scrubs were just about the cutest thing I'd ever seen.  I quickly found out that they didn't like being called cute, after all they spent many years at Squirrel University training to be doctors and nurses.  I felt extremely sorry for offending them.

Turns out Cornelius sustained some minor internal bleeding injuries and a broken leg.  He had to stay in the hospital for a couple of days.  During that time his wife came to visit once or twice, but couldn't leave the children for that long.

Finally, Cornelius was able to return to his family.  He was just ecstatic to see everyone.  The children had a banner hanging on one the tree's saying, "Welcome Home Dad!"  Sadly Mr. Quirk was not able to attend the party because he was needed elsewhere.  Squirrel translators are in very high demand so he is never able to stay in one spot very often.  The party went on for a few hours, but then his wife shooed everyone away so Cornelius could get his rest.

I didn't see much of Cornelius and his family after this.  Living in our trees brought back some hard memories of times they'd like to forget so they moved on.  I'm not sure where they went, but I wish them the best of luck.

As I was told the story to Wyatt the other morning he wouldn't believe me.  Telling me this never happened and there is no such thing as a squirrel hospital.  I couldn't believe it!   How does he know?  Just because he's never met a squirrel translator doesn't mean they don't exist.  He tried to trip me up in my story testing my facts.  Asking me what the wife's name was (which as I said I never did get) and where Mr. Quirk is now.  Of course I have no clue where he is.  He moved on.  He's a busy squirrel and doesn't exactly have time to write.  I wish Wyatt could have met Cornelius and the gang.  I think he would have liked them.

P.S. Wyatt claims that the mailbox broke because he was racing his scooter down the driveway and ran into it.  Then he duct-taped the mailbox so his dad wouldn't notice it.  -----Likely story----