Wild and Wacky Squirrels

When my husband first came to America from the Soviet Union, I was living in Manhattan. On his first morning there, he decided to go for a walk in Central Park. He got lost, and his pleas for help in very limited English were met by people hightailing it away from the sounds of his distress. Finally, he happened upon a Ukrainian American, who recognized his accent and set him on the right path.

When he arrived at the place where I worked, he was very excited not only because he had managed to get back, but also because he had seen so many squirrels along the way. I was a bit confounded by his excitement over the squirrels until he explained that there weren't many squirrels left in his country because people had hunted and eaten most of them. Though squirrels feature prominently in many Russian children's books, it seems that children rarely have the opportunity to see them in person.

Well, this weekend I was nearly driven to hunting them myself. Our neighborhood squirrels seem to have gone crazy. In the front of the house, they have been hiding in our bushes eating berries. Next door they have eaten my neighbors' only pumpkin and all the figs on their fig tree. All of that is normal, but on Saturday one squirrel decided he wanted to come into my house. First, he jumped on my back screen door. I heard him and thought it was my cat, so I nearly let him in! Luckily, I took a good look and realized that it wasn't Sassy. Next, he climbed up on the dining room window ledge, where the cats usually sit, but as the screen had fallen out a little while earlier, he couldn't gnaw at it, and the window was tightly shut. When I banged on the window to chase him from there, he jumped across the back stoop and up to the screen of my kitchen window, but lost his grip because his front paws ended up on the outer glass pane. Finally, he ran away. I sent Mr. Paws out to chase him, but my spoiled cat wasn't too happy with me because of the nasty weather.

What caused the squirrel's mad behavior? I can't be sure, but I was making chocolate chip cookies at the time.

Vocabulary
hightail (it) (verb, idiom --"it" does not refer to anything)-- get away as fast as you can (refers to what some animals, such as rabbits, do when they run away)
distress (noun)-- anxiety, suffering (distressing -- adjective, distress - verb)
to be confounded by (verb+past participle) -- to be confused or puzzled by
prominently (adverb)-- widely known (prominent-- adjective)
take a good look (idiom)-- to view carefully
stoop (noun)-- steps in front or back of your house, mostly used in New York (origin: Dutch)
(stoop -- verb meaning to bend over)

1. The Statue of Liberty stands _____________ in New York Harbor.
2. After the car accident, Karl was in ______________.
3. When Sue came home and saw that her house had been broken into, she __________________________ around to see if anything had been stolen.
4. As I sat on the front _________, the squirrels came up to me looking for food.
5. When the cat came, the squirrels, ______________________ away from me.
6. The cat ___________________ the behavior of the squirrels because he just wanted to play.

Grammar Point: