Those who know me already know this: I have a very vivid imagination. On top of that, I often find myself in completely zany adventures, stories, and escapades.
So here’s my most recent scare, told exactly as it happened.
It was an ordinary Friday when my partner and I had taken the day off to spend time together while our little girl was at daycare. That day, some construction workers came to make repairs to the exterior wall of the triplex where we live. Important detail: it was the exterior wall that faces directly onto our daughter’s bedroom window. When 5 p.m. rolled around, the workers left their scaffolding up since they were coming back on Monday.
I forgot all about it, caught up in the dinner-bath-bedtime routine.
It was past 11 p.m. when I heard strange noises coming from my daughter’s room. I jumped out of bed, remembering the access point from the outside that would make it easy to kidnap my daughter. My heart was pounding, worst-case scenarios were racing through my head, and I mentally prepared myself to fight like a wild animal against the strangers behind the door.
I imagine the worst: the window wide open, my daughter’s bed empty, me screaming at my partner to call the police… Or even me fighting to keep my daughter safe at home and pushing the stranger out the window: a concussion followed by his death…
I take a deep breath. Bam! I yank the door open: my daughter is sleeping like Sleeping Beauty. I think to myself, “That’s it, I’ve gone completely crazy! I’m just imagining noises… Go back to bed, Mom!” So I do one last check: inside my daughter’s closet. There’s no one in there(!), though I did take the time to check.
That’s when I hear giggling and scratching. Fear washes over me again, because it’s clearly coming from the window. I grab whatever’s within reach—a teething necklace, which I wrap around my palm, and a broken slat from the old crib: the perfect weapons. I approach, furious at the situation, since I’d been sleeping so peacefully before this abrupt awakening. (As you can imagine, dear colleague, my partner was still sleeping peacefully and never heard a thing…)
I pull back the curtain and find myself face to face with these strangers. There are three or four of them… squirrels! They’re having a picnic on the scaffolding, with their nuts and scraps from the trash. They’re also playing in the window screen and tugging at it between the two windows!
“Pich pich!” I scare them in turn, just to completely close the outer part of the window.
My heart’s still racing! But I’m so proud to have saved my daughter’s life—she slept right through the whole “battle.”