The Fanged Behemoth Panthers of Toronto, Canada

I forgot to warn her. Kathy of the JunkDrawer was headed to Toronto and I somehow neglected to give her the tip that very well could have saved lives....

Beware the squirrels.

Heyyyy, you're laughing... Stop laughing, you!-- What do you think this is a humor blog or something? I'm very serious about this.

(sigh)

But okay. I guess I understand.

When you think squirrels, you probably think little, fluffy gray fellows who hop around with bushy tails and soft white tummies, looking cute and and stealing Clusters cereal with their adorable little paws...

You think of hundreds of busy, nose-wiggling, society-approved rodents, shelling walnuts for Willy Wonka by the hour for peanuts...

Or "Andy" the sawdust-stuffed muse from Mrs. Dingus' antique shop in the Chevy Chase film Funny Farm.

But these are not the squirrels of which I speak. Oh noooo...

I speak of Toronto squirrels. Which aren't, in fact, squirrels at all, but giant free-roaming, fanged-and-venomous, Canadian black panthers that stalk, and sneak and lurk in public spaces.

(black squirrel photos courtesy of Scarysquirrel.org and LOL-enhanced by me)

Toronto squirrels are a whole other dish of nuts, my friends.

Gosh, I recall the first time I saw them. I was on a trip to see Phantom of the Opera at the Pantages Theater, and was roaming the city a bit before the show.

There in the park, the sunbathers were enjoying the summer sunshine beaming down on them, catching up on their reading, playing a casual game of frisbee...

WHOLLY UNAWARE that there were these unnaturally large, fleet-footed carnivorous beasts surrounding them, creeping stealthily, hopping from bench to bench, waiting for the right moment to STRIKE... and sink their shiny white vampire teeth into the unsuspecting good folk of Toronto.

I saw this spectacle and wanted to shriek:

"What are you people DOING, lying there so casually?! How can you READ at a time like this?! RUN, people, RUN! Run like the wind!! There are panthers! Giant vampire panthers here in the park!"

But I realized my own safety was also at risk, and I'd shelled out too much for the Phantom tickets to get killed and drained of blood before seeing the show. So I did what any self-respecting tourist would do.

I ducked into the safety of a hockey collectibles shop. ("Ooooh, Ron Francis photos..." )

I returned home from that trip unnerved, but wiser. And as I drove down my driveway and scared the walnuts out that same simple gray squirrel I scare each night--

(I swear, every evening, he's like some teeny Indiana Jones trying to escape that giant rolling ball-- )

--I had an all-new admiration for our neighbors to the north. They are made of tough stuff, our Canadian friends. To all my Canadian readers, I give you great credit for your bravery in the face of perpetual skin-shredding, eyeball-eating, blood-sucking danger.

And to Kathy, I can only extend my most sincere apologies. I failed you. I am only relieved to learn that you and your traveling companions arrived home safely.

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Driving Miss Crazy

I ended up behind a Student Driver today. Poor kid was going about 15 miles an hour, with even the exhaust spewing the stench of sweat, PowerAde and terror.

It reminded me of my own early driving days, and a particular trip where I returned home, not entirely sure I’d ever be allowed IN Canada again.

See, I’d learned to drive during my senior year of high school, taught by my mother. Now, I do believe Mom had my best interest at heart. But what a shy, nervous, overachieving nerd-girl like myself needed was a guiding hand… a calm voice… a vote of confidence.

And Mom’s guiding hands were mostly busy clinging to the door-handle while her voice shrieked, “Do you SEE THAT STOP SIGN?! STOP! STOP!!! For the love of Mike, STAAAAHHHHHP!!!!”

This usually started about halfway down the driveway.

So I went off to college with a license, but with very little real driving experience…

Also, a small eye twitch, when I’d hear someone say the word “stop.”

And when I graduated college, I got a job, as luck would have it, not far from my apartment. REALLY not far from my apartment. Like, I could see the office building, if I stood in my bathtub on tiptoes and peered out the window.

I was at that job about four years before the company moved locations and I suddenly had to have a car. So I took some driving lessons from AAA as a refresher, and was surprised to learn their teaching techniques varied quite a bit from my mother’s own unique style.

I’d only had my car about a week, when my supervisor decided that, great! Since I was going to this tradeshow to set up the corporate booth-- and since shipping a booth meant you could never be sure the booth wouldn’t accidentally be sent to Zimbabwe--I could just drive the booth to the show.

DRIVE the booth…

In a several ton moving vehicle…

An SUV, specifically…

Five hours north…

To Toronto.

You know: the one in Canada... A whole other country.

I said, “Okay, I’ll do it,” hoping he didn’t notice my eye starting to twitch. And I learned I’d be driving with a coworker, to help with the booth cases.

It concerned me somewhat that the coworker had children to support.

Or as I was thinking of them at the time, “the bereaved orphans.”

Well, my coworker ended up driving about half of the way before we stopped for gas, and she suggested I take the wheel the rest of the way into Toronto.

And once again, I didn’t want to admit the idea of driving this large, unfamiliar automobile on a road where there were, like, OTHER LIFEFORMS was somewhat of a concern to me considering my skill level.

So I got behind the wheel. Things were actually going very well on our way into Toronto. We joked, we listened to the radio, and two and a half hours went by with me not killing so much as a moth in the grill.

I was feeling good.

Then came the hotel parking garage. Or as I shall call it, my Waterloo.

Yes, my coworker had agreed to have the booth cases taken into the exposition hall, while I parked the SUV. And such was my relief over having made it into Toronto so smoothly—not so much as missing an exit—that I was already thinking happy thoughts of dinner.

Little did I know that the parking garage required you to take a ticket first. So I pulled in, and realized I was a bit too far away to reach the ticket. I opened my door and stepped a leg out of the car, to grab it and…

My foot slipped off the brake.

Did I mention that it was an underground parking garage, where there was a bit of a, well, SLOPE DOWN?

Oh, there was.

And so, the car began to roll forward, me half-in, half-out of the car. And there I was, being dragged alongside this SUV in the middle of a parking garage in the Great White North, while my coworker was waiting for me, having a glass of wine in the plush hotel lounge.

Just after I drove through the wooden arm barrier, I managed to get the vehicle to come to a stop-- my leg bleeding, one shoe lost, the driver’s side mirror bashed, and the wooden arm in splinters on the ground.

The next twenty minutes involved me tearfully explaining to some parking authority officers-- who my mind over the years has recorded as Mounted Police-- what exactly had happened that caused damage to the City of Toronto’s property.

Not knowing the local laws, I recall wondering if you could be ejected from Canada for this sort of thing.

Well, the Mounties were actually really nice to me. Probably because I was bleeding on their concrete and I only had one shoe. So they wrote up the accident and didn’t put me in the pokey over the cost of the arm or anything.

After locating my errant footwear, I headed up to the lounge. My coworker eyed me and said, “What took you so long?” I was limping a little and still bleeding, with eyeliner and mascara streaked into circles under my eyes.

I sat down and ordered a Molson, eye twitching. "The drivers around here are crazy ."


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