Lexi's Tale

For Andrea Spooner,
who knows how to improve a tale
per excellence
–J.H
.

CHAPTER ONE

Breakfast in the Park
     
1

CHAPTER TWO

Rehearsal Time
     
13

CHAPTER THREE

PeeWee in Trouble
     
27

CHAPTER FOUR

The Stranger's Breakfast
     
35

CHAPTER FIVE

The Old Wallet
     
49

CHAPTER SIX

Ruckus in the Park
     
60

CHAPTER SEVEN

I Go for a Ride
     
71

CHAPTER EIGHT

A Man Named Stefan
     
80

CHAPTER NINE

The Newspaper Article
     
86

CHAPTER TEN

Squirrel Circus
     
96

What's better than being a squirrel: running, leaping, soaring, and flying through the air? Being a squirrel means eating delicious seeds and nuts, fruits and flowers, mushrooms and plant buds, and all sorts of leftovers from humans. Being a squirrel means wearing a warm and handsome coat of fur and waving a magnificent tail. What's better than being a squirrel? Nothing!

My name is Lexington, but those who know me best save time by calling me Lexi. Lexington is also the name of a big street in New York City where I live. Most of my squirrel relatives are named after streets too. Perhaps that's why I and all my family are so street-smart. There's my brother Madison and my cousins Amsterdam and Columbus, for example. But just as most city streets are named by numbers, so most of my relatives are called by those numbers too. I have sisters named Sixty-one, Sixty-two, and Sixty-three, to mention just a few.

From my home, in a hole high in a maple tree in Central Park, I can see just about everything. I watch the birds flying about and I check out the morning as the park begins to fill with human visitors. At dawn today, I
looked out and saw a lone man with a dark beard walking back and forth, back and forth, on a nearby path. He wasn't wearing running clothes or running shoes, like most early-morning visitors to the park. He had a cap on his head, but it wasn't a baseball cap. On his feet, instead of sneakers, he wore a pair of leather sandals with socks. I've noticed that when people wear sandals, they generally let their bare toes stick out. And, the man seemed to be talking to himself. Silly, I thought.

“Lexi,” a voice called to me. “How many squirrels are in this park?”

I looked down from my perch. Below me stood
a fat, tailless creature. It was PeeWee, my guinea pig friend. Many weeks ago, at the time of the full flower moon, he was abandoned in the park by his former owner.

“Who can count? And who cares?” I raced down the tree and landed on the ground next to PeeWee.

“Everywhere I look, I see squirrels.” PeeWee said. “There must be hundreds of squirrels around here.”

“I know that years ago a scientist, with nothing better to do with his time, came and spent many weeks trying to count,” I said. “My old uncle Ninety-nine heard the fellow say that there were more than thirteen thousand eight hundred squirrels here in the park. My uncle
laughs when he talks about it because he knows there are loads more squirrels than that.”

What my guinea pig friend didn't know was that back when he first arrived in the park, Uncle Ninety-nine warned me to keep away from him.

“Squirrels don't need other animals,” he had reminded me. “That fat funny fellow won't be any use to you. In fact, he might get you into trouble.”

“He's interesting,” I had told my uncle. “He may not be able to climb to the top of a tree, but he's seen other parts of the world. He's lived in a pet shop and inside a human home.”

“If you don't watch out, you'll find yourself in one of the those places too,” old Uncle Ninety-nine had warned me as he dug in the ground. Luckily he had found a large nut and become so busy eating it that he had forgotten what he
was saying. My uncle is enormous. All squirrels love food and we eat our own body weight each week, but Uncle Ninety-nine seems to eat enough for two squirrels. As a result, he's almost as big as some of the dogs that come walking in our park.

“It must be great fun to have such a huge family,” PeeWee said to me, as he has more than once, referring to the large number of squirrels and not the large size of my uncle.

“Squirrels don't care very much about family,” I told him. “We don't mate for life like many other animals do. Father squirrels don't stick around to help raise their children. And babies become independent at a very young age. We may play together and chase one another, but a squirrel looks after himself.” I gave myself a good scratch as I thought about
it some more. “No,” I added, “squirrels never go out on a limb for anyone else.”

“You don't know how lucky you are,” said PeeWee sadly. “I wish there were at least one other guinea pig in the park.”

Poor PeeWee. I hadn't given the matter much thought before, but now I realized that it must be lonely to be the only representative of your species in all the 843 acres that make up Central Park. Even the animals over in the zoo are paired together. I tried to distract him.

“Cheer up,” I said. “If you were back inside that old cage you used to live in, you wouldn't have another guinea pig or even a squirrel like me to keep you company.”

“You're right,” PeeWee quickly agreed. “What would I have done without you?”

I didn't answer. The truth is, without me, he
never would have survived in the park from day one. PeeWee would have starved or been caught by a dog or come to some other dreadful fate. He arrived in the park with no survival skills at all. He didn't know how to climb a tree. He'd never dug for food or hidden from danger before. He still can't climb trees, but at least he's learned the other things that he needs to live in the outside world. And PeeWee did come to the park with one very special talent: He knows how to read. That's right, read! He's the only animal I've ever heard of who can do that. And so many times, when other squirrels are sleeping in their nests or chewing on a pawful of seeds, I sit in his little hole and listen to the stories that he reads aloud from the books and papers that have been left in the park by careless humans.