Rocky start
As a rule I refrain from including in this blog aspects of my
personal life that aren’t film related. But this was just too weird.
When I woke up this morning I heard my cat, the redoubtable
Yodel, 
scratching around at something in the hall of my apartment. I went to
check and he was staring intently at the kepi, a French officers cap, hanging
on the wall (sometimes I like to pretend I’m Jack Lemmon in “Irma La Douce”).
On the hat was a small animal.
At first I thought it was a mouse or even a rat, but it
jumped off the hat and was gliding down
the hall, Yodel in cautious pursuit. The
creature was in no danger: Yodel is a pacifist; he probably just wanted to
start a dialogue, learn about a new culture, exchange ideas. Anyway, whatever
it was had holed up behind a bookcase.
I had a brain storm. I could use the laundry basket (luckily I
had just made my annual visit to the laundromat so it was almost empty) as a
net, set it up on one side of the bookcase and with Yodel standing guard at the
other, I could pull the bookcase away from the wall, shunting the beast into
the cage. I felt like Steve Irwin. Bring on the stingray!
It worked. Nonetheless, as I carried it down the two flights to
let it out the front door, the animal slithered up and out of the basket. Was
it possessed? As it shimmied down the hallway about a half inch off the ground.
I noticed it had membranes stretching from its forelegs to its rearlegs,
allowing it to become airborne. Finally, I coaxed it back into the basket and
set it free; it went like a bullet up a tree.
Turns out the creature was a northern flying squirrel. So I
started the day with a flying squirrel on my kepi. What next, a talking moose?
Has anyone else had a flying squirrel 
in their apartment? Or something
stranger?
Anyway, once I pull myself together, I’ll resume writing about
film.
