Deep deception

Sometimes blending in will work against you

by Sally Cragin

Illustration by Lennie Peterson

"If you would be convinced how differently armed the squirrel is naturally for dealing with pitch pine cones, just try to get one off with your teeth. He who extracts the seeds from a single closed cone with the aid of a knife will be constrained to confess that the squirrel earns his dinner. It is a rugged customer, and will make your fingers bleed. But the squirrel has the key to this conical and spiny chest of many apartments. He sits on a post, vibrating his tail, and twirls it as a plaything.

But so is a man commonly a locked-up chest to us, to open whom, unless we have the key of sympathy, will make our hearts bleed."

-- H.D. Thoreau, January 25, 1856

Hollis the Mountain Man avoids confrontation of all kinds, but he finds himself in a sticky situation when his aunt Winnie (named after Lake Winnepesaukee though she still can't swim) asks him to help her cut down a perfectly healthy butternut tree to discourage the squirrels from packing nuts in her attic (and cellar, and eaves, and barn . . .). The day he arrives, she has the chainsaw oiled and revved, and just needs his help dragging the ladder over to the tree.

"You know," he begins cautiously. "We might have better luck with this situation if we found where the squirrels are getting into the house. Then we could board up those holes."

Hollis has brought along a collection of old shingles, a bag of steel wool, peppermint tea bags, a jar of capsicum pepper, and moth balls for the purpose.

Delia Ellis Bell the Partial Yankee (there was a questionable great-great-grandmother) collects folkloric remedies and suggests these possible squirrel deterrents.

"Of course, if none of 'em work," she told him, "you might try drinking a lot of black tea and then pissing on the eaves. I've heard that can scare 'em off."

Hollis hopes he needn't relieve himself in his aunt's attic, but all of these procedures would be easier than cutting down a perfectly healthy tree.

Winnie agrees to his repairs when she sees the supplies. So Hollis drags the ladder against the house. His initial plan is to eyeball the eaves and shingles, and if there are any holes or loose boards, to nail them shut. This entails climbing up the ladder, looking around, and then clambering down, moving the ladder, and repeating the process. Winnie's house is a colonial-era cottage which has the side facing the street freshly painted white with black shutters, and the other three sides, more faded and chipped.

"Historical Society," Winnie explains. "I won't let 'em put a plaque up, but I make sure at least one side looks good."

Hollis finds a few loose boards, and carefully tucks in steel wool, mothballs, teabags, and pepper before nailing them shut. The house is all but surrounded by trees, and Hollis can feel pairs of beady, curious eyes drilling into his back. A couple of times, he surprises a squirrel on the pitch of the roof -- the gray fur blends easily with the asphalt shingles, and only when the critter moves is he aware of it.

As he works, he begins to enjoy himself. Sure, some tree branches are a little close to the house, and he will cut those later, but the day is sunny and warm, and a light breeze blows the scent of honeysuckle toward him. The birds are twittering, well-hidden in the branches, though the occasional swallow swoops by.

He works steadily and purposefully. Of course, he should be making these efforts on his own dwelling, where a persistent leak over the sink and a broken step are a chronic inconvenience. But he doesn't feel like it, and since it is nearly summer, he could live with the step, and hope the leaks are under control.

While he is hammering, Delia Ellis Bell is slowly making her way along Main Street. In Tritown, warm weekends mean yard sales, and Delia is determined that this year she'll make a profit on her cottage antique business. So far, she's spent $10 on a set of aqua Mel-Mac plates that a city shopowner she knows would pay a dollar apiece for, two willow picnic baskets with loose hinges that she could repair and sell to another dealer, a carton of antique giftwrap, a couple of "novelty" ceramic cups featuring Snuffy Smith (in an outhouse bellowing "Maw, Where's mah cawfee?"), and a Nancy Drew first edition The Clue in the Diary. This would be worth hundreds if the binding weren't frayed and peeling. Delia gasps when she sees the blue and orange cover, and then groans when she sees the binding. The highs and lows of junk scavenging send a less-stouthearted individual into cardiac fibrillations, but Delia relishes the chase. She also delights in haggling, and then rehabilitating her salvage.

If Hollis sees her on Mondays, her fingers are invariably stained crimson from polishing battered heirloom silver with a rouge cloth.

From his ladder perch, he sees her turn into the All Faiths church yard. (The congregation used to be known as "the Presby-Congo-Metho-Baps" until the Unitarians and a small Episcopal crowd joined. Now, the hymns are all-inclusive on every fourth Sunday, the communion bread is homemade rye, and the communion wine is two percent alcohol, but only every third week. The service lasts anywhere from 45 minutes to three hours, depending on which sect is in the ascendency).

This summer, the church is experimenting by having an ongoing yard sale on four Saturday afternoons to see if a) they could finally empty the basement; and b) (and this was a secret) to see whether new parishioners might come on the following Sunday. Delia is an Episcopagan, so sometimes she went to church and sometimes she burned incense and meditated in the privacy of her own home, but she has warm thoughts for All Faiths, the church of her youth (back then, just a Congo-Meth conflation). Hollis sees her pick up a linen tablecloth and shake it out. He watches for a while and then picks up his hammer again.

Downstairs, Winnie is poking around in her garden. For some reason, she can't settle while her great-nephew is atop the ladder. She's lost too many family members, especially the males, in freak accidents, and she is torn between telling him what to do and just fretting. But it is hot up there, she might as well make the boy some minty lemonade.

Winnie's Minty Lemonade

1 handful of fresh mint leaves crushed (don't pluck the leaves, too fussy, just toss them in teapot)

Boiling water, enough to fill a quart bottle

1/2 cup lemon concentrate

1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar

Boil water, pour over mint. After steeping for 10 minutes, strain and cool with ice cubes. Add lemon and sugar and mix well.

HOLLIS WORKS HIS WAY around three walls, patching more loose boards than he can remember. His hands reek of pepper and peppermint, and he makes the mistake of touching the corner of his eye, which sends tears streaming down his face. Then he hears "Yoo hoo," and realizes Delia has arrived with two paper sacks by her side.

Hollis descends and, to Delia's astonishment, asks to see the tablecloth.

"How'd you know?" she asks.

"A little bird told me," he smirks, and then Winnie offers them minty lemonade on the front porch.

"Almost done with the holes, Winnie," Hollis tells her. "Guess you won't have to cut the tree just yet."

"Oh, glad to hear that," says Winnie, giving Delia a wink. She has no intention of chopping the tree, but getting that boy over here to do some chores often takes drastic action -- camouflage, at least.

Delia catches the wink and changes the subject to her recent finds. "You spend an hour sifting silverware, and finally turn up some Reed & Barton silver just black with tarnish," she says. "It's like the good stuff ends up looking worse than the junk just to fit in."

"Like the squirrels on the gray roof," Hollis interupts. "I boarded up things pretty tight, but I can see how they get in. There's a couple places up there, where they blend right into the shingles."

"Speaking of blending in," says Delia, peering into the pitcher. "What have we here?"

A pale, white caterpillar bobs on the surface, stiff and motionless.

"Shoot," says Winnie, plucking it out and throwing it onto the lawn. "I thought I cleaned that mint. He must have been under a leaf."

Hollis and Delia look at one another, their faces drain of color.

"Caterpiller tea," says Delia weakly.

"I had two cups," croaks Hollis.

But Winnie just snorts and shakes her head. "You see all these nature programs about camouflage," she says. "Sometimes it just works against you."

Sally Cragin has tasted caterpiller tea and does not recommend it.

---

The Tales From Tritown archive

---