The Father's Day - Indonesian Squirrel Adventure

Since my last post concerned Mother's Day, I thought I should touch on the Father's Day experience we had. Unlike Mother's Day, there is no official Father's Day celebrated here. Since not too many people wear ties in this part of the world, there is not much merchandising that can go on for expat fathers. Maaf fellas.

However, we did mark the day with a phone call from our son, breakfast out, a ride on the Ninja and Scoopy and an unexpected backyard guest.

I say backyard as if we really had some expanse of dirt to claim as a yard. Our backyard is 50% pool, 49% patio and 1% dirt where two palm trees grow and an assortment of ferns, orchids and hibiscus eek out a living. In some ways, this is good as the pool is usable year round and should take center stage and having less vegetation behind the pool helps to cut down on mosquito hangouts, or so we hope.

The people behind us have a bigger yard and some nice trees and bamboo that grow taller than the ten or twelve foot wall that sections off our house from theirs. Birds come to visit the trees as do squirrels.

Indonesian squirrels are smaller and slimmer and tails are much more modest than the big bruisers we have in the US. We don't see them with the same frequency as we did in Texas either. What that means is you don't see too many saucer-squirrels that obviously acted "squirrely" and got mowed down by a motorist. Here it is usually a rat that gets saucerized.

Over the weekend a young squirrel apparently made it down the palm tree or fell from the palm tree on to the small landing strip of "land" behind the pool. He zipped back and forth and would climb about half-way up the tree but wouldn't go any further. This went on most of Saturday afternoon and we figured that by Sunday morning he would figure it out.

We were mistaken.

We went to breakfast and returned home. Decided to go for a swim and thought all was clear until we saw our little friend peeking around from the back of the palm tree. We tried going to the "land" side of the pool and that our presence would scare him enough that he would charge up the tree. Instead, he took refuge in the propane tank box that holds the gas tank that supplies fuel for our range. Grrrr.

We now had a small, frightened squirrel in a confined area. If we force the door open on the propane box which way would he run? There isn't a lot of choice and I was worried that our legs could look like good things to climb. We decided we needed pool equipment to assist us. The net that our gardener uses to remove leaves from the pool is on a long pole. Perfect! We tried to get as far from the propane box as we could and still have leverage to open the door. After multiple attempts, we got the door open and banged on the box to scare him out. Out he came and promptly jumped in to a potted plant that is sitting behind the pool. A mecca for hiding if you are a small squirrel looking for cover.

While we didn't scare him enough to run him up the palm, at least he was out of the propane tank area. We then decided to use the live trap that we had attempted to use, with no success, to trap a mouse that we had reeking havoc in the kitchen some time ago.

After searching the garage we found the trap. As bait, we used a piece of dried fruit that was tough enough to not easily be snatched off the hook but not too heavy to pull the hook down that it was attached to and trip the door.

We set the trap and went back to the patio side of the pool and waited. We couldn't swim because that would keep him from abandoning his garden retreat. So we just had to wait and leave him be. We went inside for a while and then came back out to have a cool drink on the patio. As we sat and chatted, we saw our friend moving around behind the pool between the palm trees. Finally, some action.

We waited some more and finished our drinks and continued to talk. At last the temptation of a piece of dried kiwi lured our victim in to the trap and SNAP! The door tripped and he was inside. This was a much more successful capture that the great mouse adventure ever hoped to be. A victory dance should have been done.

Unfortunately, the squirrel was not really a happy camper at this point. He was definitely not doing a victory dance but was getting pretty frantic inside the trap. We draped a towel over the trap to maybe calm him and to also protect our fingers just in case he was extremely panicked and nipped at us. We then transported him through the house and out the front door as you would do for any guest when it is time for them to go.

The jaga on duty and a couple of the local security guys for the neighborhood were out front. Boy! We were the afternoon entertainment. As we opened the gate all eyes turned. To come out front with something mysteriously wrapped in a towel. Buddyyy! What a great way to liven up a slow Sunday afternoon. There were lots of questions about what we had in the towel. We were trying to explain about the trap and the squirrel in broken Indonesian and English. Lots of hand-waving and such. They all thought that we had caught a mouse, tikus. Nope. Had to look up the Indonesian word for squirrel - bajing before we went out as I knew that would be a question on the test. We finally got it straight what we had trapped and that we needed to release our guest.

There are bushes and trees on the other side of the street from us, so I carried the trap over there and carefully pulled the towel away from the door. We opened the door and the prisoner, sorry - guest, would not come out. I finally had to shake him out and hope he didn't use me as a tree. Thankfully, the shrubs were much more attractive to him and he only paused a moment before he took off.

While our squirrel didn't cause quite the excitement of the squirrel in the silly Ray Stevens song "The Mississippi Squirrel Revival", he did provide some entertainment for us and the security guys and I do think we might have uttered a Hallelujah.

My honey pie wrapped-up the day, that celebrates his place in the world as a father, by watching a MotoGP (motorcycle Grand Prix) race that was being run in England. It was an all-around manly day which included male bonding with our son, hunting, gathering, capturing and racing. Who could ask for anything more?