THE SQUIRREL LADY

Hiram, Ohio is a small town and home to Hiram College where James A. Garfield once taught. The town has one traffic light, an occasional convenience mart that’s out-of-business more often than open. Sometimes there’s a pizza parlor, but usually not. At one time there was a branch bank, but not for quite some time now. It’s where I taught for eighteen of my twenty years teaching third grade.

Hiram is also the home of the Squirrel Lady. She lives on a quiet street that I traveled each day to get to the elementary school. She had signs in her yard warning of a squirrel crossing, and supplied numerous feeders for them. She took in injured squirrels and nursed them back to health and raised baby squirrels that fell out of their nest. She’d also yell at any driver who drove too fast down the street. Although Hiram is a very small town, it has more than enough police officers who were quick to ticket drivers, so I was careful not to go over their 25 mph speed limit. I didn’t get yelled at, and I never actually met her, but I heard a lot about her.

This is not the Hiram Squirrel Lady 

There are four kinds of squirrels that live in Ohio, excluding chipmunks. There are fox squirrels, the largest squirrels and becoming scarce. There are flying squirrels. I have them in my woods but never see them because I don’t walk there at night. There are gray squirrels that live in my woods and visit my feeder. They can be almost all gray, a reddish color, a mixture of red and gray and all black. They're a medium sized squirrel. And then there are the smallest of the squirrels, the red squirrel. They’re often mistaken as baby squirrels. However, they can be the most aggressive of squirrels. I’ve heard tales, true or not, that males will castrate other males even the larger squirrels.

This could be why that for the several years I had a red squirrel living between my bedroom floor and the library ceiling, I never saw squirrels at the feeder except one small red squirrel. I knew it was a squirrel living in my house and not a rat because it was quite active in the daytime, but slept all night. I shudder at the thought of a rat ever being in my house, but although the squirrel wasn’t exactly a pet I wanted, it was certainly better than a rat. I don’t know how it got in and out and many others tried to spy some opening, too, but no one ever could. I suspect there might have been a gap between the siding and walls under my front porch. Except for some concern it might chew on my electrical wiring and cause a fire I wasn't too much bothered by the squirrel, especially since I didn’t hear chewing, only the little critter scampering about and sometimes rolling nuts around.  

A red squirrel 

Then I started finding nuts in my shoes in the closet. At that time I had a sloping attic next to my upstairs bedroom and closet. I set a small Have-A-Heart trap in there and baited it with nuts and bird seed. That didn’t work. When I found a nut under my bed pillow, I knew more drastic measures needed to be taken. I could deal with that little fellow putting nuts in my shoes in my bedroom, but not having him in my bed. So although it made me quite sad, I put rat poison in the attic and never saw him again. I still feel sad about that, but not enough to invite another squirrel into my home.

In my third book, Ladies of the Garden Club, I brought the squirrel lady to life in one of my characters, Polly Popcorn, a kindergarten teacher. I had no idea if the real one still lived in Hiram or not. But several months ago I walked into The Village Bookstore in Garrettsville, Ohio; about three miles from Hiram, and Ellen Eckhouse, the owner, introduced me to Ann O’Connell, Hiram’s squirrel lady. She’s a delightful person, still loves squirrels and loves reading books. So end of story.

Tell me about someone you’ve met who you used as a character, or if you're not a writer someone you've met who you'd like to use if you were a writer.