Trapped

“Trapped”

Two years ago, when I was still a baby, Father would cuddle me in his paws every night without fail before I went to bed. He would then regale me with stories of the world of the humans; a universe where chaos and greed prevailed, and kindness to others, regardless of species, was ignored.He would then reassure me that it was all fiction, and he’d hold me close to him until I fell into a deep slumber.

Of course, back then I was a young, naive baby that believed him and thought the world as I knew it would remain the same till my death.

Now, in the present, all the stories of my childhood have passed, along with Father’s last breath. Most of my days went by in a peaceful routine, mostly involving food and sleep. Well, until recently, that is.

Yesterday started off as per normal. Morning dew slid down the leaves onto my head as I made my daily pilgrimage to my secret food stash – An abundant acorn tree that so far has remained undiscovered by the gluttons that are somehow my cousins. The birds were around me, singing lullabies to the nocturnal animals.

Having made it to my destination (which was relatively close to home), I absentmindedly picked off an acorn and chewed it. It was just perfect; I’ve got a food stash to temporarily call my own, my own knothole and no worries of losing anything, ever…

Then I heard the unfamiliar buzzing near the tree I was sitting in.

Adrenalin kicked in as I flew down the tree, afraid of what might have happened had I stayed on. Taking a look around, I saw humans wielding strange, sharp objects (which, I later learnt, were chainsaws), bringing them near my tree and cutting into its trunk.

Then it hit me: I’m now officially a homeless squirrel.

The forest was falling all around me and I could only remain fixated at a spot, wondering whether the humans could hear the low, heart wrenching moans of resignation from the trees above the buzzing inferno as the trees fell to their deaths. Turning to my right, I saw the legions of other woodland animals fleeing the chaos and my paws took over all mental processes, following the crowds to their next indefinite destination.

It was almost sundown when we reached a little suburban town that was to be our new home. By then, the mob had dispersed and I was left to marvel at everything on my own; pristine white boxes with pyramids attached to their tops (a stray cat told me they were houses, where humans lived. After I bit its paw when it tried to eat me.) were set in the middle of lush, green plots of grass and dotted with rose bushes surrounded me and I thought things were finally looking up for me.

That was when I heard the cry of pain from behind. I ran up the nearest tree in a spate of panic and only dared to look for the source when curiosity got the better of me. Turns out, one of the deer had gotten its hind leg stuck in an alien, jaw like contraption (now known to me as a bear trap). Its blood was pooling on the grass below, staining it red. I shed a silent tear and uttered a little prayer as the pitiful bleating decrescendo-ed into nothingness.

I stayed in that tree throughout the whole of last night, not daring to climb down even to look for food. I curled up in that tree that night and I silently whimpered myself to sleep, wishing that everything around me was only the nightmare my father had spun for me those two years ago as a tool to get me to sleep.