I told the retarded squirrel story in the seventies. Today you would never use a term like retarded , but at that time we did use retarded.
On a wintery day I noticed a squirrel that was apparently trying to cross the alley by jumping from one tree to the other.
The squirrel would run up one branch and then another looking for which branch was the closest to his target across the alley.
Finally he chose a branch and went as far as possible to the end which would still support him. He rocked back and forth three times trying to find the best jumping off place. He tried this a few times and then gave it his best push.
He missed. He didn't get to the branch in the other tree. Instead he fell about 10 feet and landed in a soft snow bank. He was stunned for a moment . Then shook some snow of and jumped through the snow until he got to the fence.
Only middle school kids would think this is funny. They seemed to like the squirrel falling in the deep snow.They kept asking about my squirrel, but I did not see more squirrel incidents.
It was odd as we think of squirrels running through the trees with little effort..
