The strangest thing happened to me this morning… we had a squirrel in the house. He was sitting on the television stand in front of the TV screen holding a nut he’d found someplace. I called to my wife in the kitchen and told her there was a squirrel in the house; she said to let it out. Ever try to herd a squirrel to where you want it to go? That’s what I figured. I got up off the chair and thought I would open the front door first. The strange thing was that the squirrel hopped down and followed me to the door, waited while I opened it, and scampered outside. A bit later on when I let the dog out the back door, the squirrel saw the door open and wanted to get back inside, so he came bounding across the yard for the door, which I attempted to close as quickly as I could. It was all very strange, so I went and blogged about it.

When I woke up and realized it was all a dream, I was somewhat relieved… I don’t really want a squirrel in the house — they can make a horrible mess. The weird deja-vu part is that a number of years ago, we actually had a wild rabbit in the house (not a dream). We have this habit that whenever we let the dog out, we close the door, but don’t latch it tight, so when he wants to come back inside, he just pushes on the door with his paw and comes in… then we can get up and go close the door for him. The upside is we don’t have to jump up the minute he wants to come back in the house and he doesn’t scratch at the door. The downside is that sometimes the door could be open for a half-hour before we notice. This is, we figure, how the rabbit got in the house.

Back in the days before kids, we had two extra bedrooms, to one of which we typically kept the door closed as it was the unofficial collecting spot for things we didn’t know where else to put. For a couple of days, for periods of time the dog would lie outside the closed door to this room, sniffing under the door and whining a little. We thought he must have left a chew toy or something in there. Eventually my wife opened the door. On a desk in the corner was a little wicker basket with dried flowers, and sitting in the basket was a little brown rabbit. Have you ever tried to herd a rabbit to where you want him to go?

We have photographic evidence of the rabbit. As for the rest of it, I must be going squirrelly.