![]() ![]() ![]() I promised him I wouldn’t, then snuck into the luggage compartment of the Greyhound bus and chewed my way through the thick canvas of a stranger’s duffel bag. “I’ll be watching this afternoon,” he chipped. ![]() But he took a vacation day - the first one of his entire life - to see me off at the bus station. The harvest has been in full swing for some time now, and since there’s been an acorn surplus this year, Grandpa Bushtail has had to work Sundays, too. Don’t give up on yourself.”Īnd so, on Sunday morning, I set off for Lambeau Field. I’ve seen you catch those acorns on Saturdays at the Nut Company. I didn’t work my tail off for years in that dark storage burrow for nothing - I did it for you. He took me aside one day this October and said, “Harry, if you can dream it, you can do it. You’ve got to be realistic.”īut not Grandpa Bushtail. There’s no pair of spandex pants that will fit your small haunches. You’re a squirrel there’s no way they make helmets small enough to fit you. I’ve dreamed of playing for the Packers my whole life, but everyone has always said to me, “Harry, you can’t play professional football. My friends call me a real Cheesehead (this could also be because I eat all the cheese I can find out of trash cans, but I’m not sure). My grandfather isn’t one for showing much emotion, but boy, does he care about football I’ll always remember the 2011 Super Bowl- he drank too much gutter-water and got so excited when the Packers won that he started making these high pitched chirping noises and fell out of the tree.īecause of Grandpa Bushtail, football is everything to me, too. He’s lived alone since Grandma Bushtail died in a horrible dog accident (we don’t like to talk about it), so I go with him, and we watch football through the big picture window. I used to hang out on the bird feeder, but one day the female Human came outside with a tennis racket, screaming, “The seeds are for the birds! Gerry, the damn squirrels are eating the bird feed again! I told you we had to do something about this!” The next day there was a special squirrel-proof cage around the feeder, so now I just sit next to him on the branch. Grandpa Bushtail gets Sundays off, and he spends them on a branch outside the Humans’ house near his single-hole burrow. We end up mostly just rolling the nuts down the hall and throwing them back and forth, but it still feels like important work. My cousins and I go help him on Saturdays. He’s refuses to retire, and during the harvest he works six days a week, organizing the bounty that the forager squirrels bring into the cavernous underground burrows where the Nut Company keeps its goods. He’s been member of the Squirrel Storage Union for his whole life (at 10-years-old, he’s one of the oldest squirrels in Athelstane, our small Wisconsin town). His name is Harry Bushtail here is his tale, as told to FTW writer Charlotte Wilder. On Sunday, a squirrel ran across Lambeau Field during the Packers game against the Colts. ![]()
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