David Sedaris: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

“Looks like a mouse with a messed-up tail,” said my sister. “Or a little squirrel, maybe, that was rained on.”

“Actually, I’m a gerbil,” the gerbil said. I wasn’t expecting her to join the conversation, but hearing her voice-so full of pride and sass-made me feel right about sparing her. “If you’ve never come upon one of me before, it’s because I’m not native to this area. I’m”-and she said the greatest thing-“invasive.”

My brother moved a step closer to my sister and asked if that was another word for “dressed up.”

“I’m pretty sure. Yeah,” she answered.

The gerbil looked from one of them to the other. Then she turned to me. “Wow, these two are stupid,” she said. “No dumber than hamsters, I’ll grant them that, but you hear about owls and automatically think ‘brainy.’ ”

“That’s just a myth,” I told her, and then, before my dumbfounded brother and sister, I lifted the gerbil in my right talon and took off. Figuring my family would probably come looking for us, I flew past my home and headed to a henhouse on an abandoned farm out near the reform school. There I helped the gerbil remove her bikini top and watched as she hunkered down, exhausted, in a pile of hay. It would have been easy for her to run away, but I hoped she would stay put. More than hoped actually. I meant to say something to this effect, but then I must have dropped off.

It wasn’t much later that I awoke-the story of my life since my mate passed away. I get tired, wiped out, even, but can’t seem to sleep more than a few hours at a stretch. It’s such a weird time to be awake-noon. Spooky, really. There have been a few occasions when, tired of just standing there and hoping to fall back to sleep, I got up and flew around.

The dining options were definitely interesting-lapdogs, ducklings, I even saw an iguana sunning himself on top of a Styrofoam cooler. But there was also a lot of traffic and noise.

I never liked the world I saw during the day. Then I started hating the one I saw at night and wondered, What’sleft? What changed things, albeit slowly, was learning. It’s like there’s a hole where my life used to be, and I’m filling it with information-about potatoes. About hot water heaters. Anything will do. These leeches, though. For the first time in memory, I was unable to sleep not because I was anxious but because I was excited. To live in a damp crowded asshole and sing-if these guys don’t know the secret to living, I don’t know who does.

The gerbil awoke just after sunset and busied herself hunting crickets. After that I took her to a bird feeder, where she put away a few dozen sunflower seeds. Then she wiped her mouth and turned to me, saying, “Okay, Owl, what’s the plan?”

A short while later we were at the zoo, where I introduced her to the hippopotamus. The two hit it off immediately, and within minutes the gerbil was all caught up vis-à-vis the anal parasites. “Fascinating!” she said. “And you’re telling me they sing? ”

“I want them out,” repeated the hippo, and with no hesitation the gerbil offered to go in after them. “Why not?” she said. “I’ve been in tighter places-no offense-and if I can’t convince them to leave, I can at least find out what their story is.”

“You would do that for me?” the hippo asked.

The gerbil answered that she’d just spent eighteen months living in a cage. “When I finally escaped, I told myself that from here on out, I was going to make some changes: try new food, visit exotic places, live a little!”

I couldn’t believe what a good sport she was. I’d have wanted time to mentally prepare, but not her. The only suggestion she made was that we lube her up a little. “Just to give me a bit more mobility.”

“You think?” the hippo said. “But what about your fur?”

And the gerbil laughed, saying, “This old thing?”

There was a carousel near the entrance to the zoo. The gears were coated in heavy grease, and after the gerbil had rubbed against them, I returned her to the pen, where we positioned ourselves on the concrete platform. The hippo backed up under my direction, and though it took quite a bit of maneuvering, we eventually got her rectum even with the gerbil. She was just about to crawl in when I felt myself being watched, and looked up to see four pairs of eyes, perfectly round and glinting from a tree beside the snack hut. My mother was there, my brother and sister, and joining them was, I’m willing to guess, the cousin I’d stood up last night. Then an elderly uncle arrived. Then an aunt.

I used to think that there were great horned owls and not-so-great horned owls. I’d put my former mate and myself in the first category, and from that lofty vantage point, we’d looked down upon my family. Now they were looking down on me: A son. A brother. A cousin, a nephew, a half-baked know-it-all standing beside a grease-blackened gerbil at the gaping back door of a hippopotamus. Even discounting the singing leeches, it really was stunning: this trio of newfound friends, so far-fetched we simply had to be true.

David Sedaris is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Public Radio International’s This American Life. His books have been translated into twenty-six languages.

Ian Falconer is the author and illustrator of the bestselling Olivia series: Olivia, a 2001 Caldecott Honor Book; Olivia Saves the Circus;Olivia… and the Missing Toy; Olivia Forms a Band;Olivia Helps with Christmas; and Olivia Goes to Venice (2010). His illustrations have also graced many covers of The New Yorker . In addition, he has designed sets and costumes for the New York City Ballet, the San Francisco Opera, and the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), among others. He lives in New York City.