#what happens when you supersize a minor nuisance?

[impartofthesolution]

Chester, the Totally Normal Mutant Squirrel

           Once upon a time, there was a squirrel named Chester.  Chester was a normal squirrel, who did normal squirrel things.  Chester’s life amounted to little.  The actions he did and the choices he made didn’t change the world. One day, Chester found an old jack-o-lantern sitting on a stoop.  Perhaps at one time it looked fearsome with a snarl and blazing eyes.  Now, the eyes had merged with the nose, and all the teeth had fallen out.  Black spots of rot had set in, too.  Still, the pumpkin smelled appetizing, and all of Chester’s efforts at burying nuts and digging decoy holes made him hungry.  He went to town on the pumpkin.            Chester got drunk off the fermented pumpkin.  The end.            The end??!?  Hardly!  The inebriated Chester staggered around until he found a green, edible looking pumpkin. Hungry again, he nommed his way through that one, too.  Something was fishy with that “pumpkin.”  By the time Chester had finished eating the fruit, he had already started growing. He kept growing until he was 20 feet tall, sitting up.  Dizzy from the ordeal and the ethanol popping around his head, Chester fell over and passed out, crushing a few shrubs underneath him.            Poor Chester.  Well, not poor Chester.  Don’t feel bad for him; he wasn’t bothered in the least.  Even though his brain grew in size, too, he did not gain any intelligence. It’s entirely possible he didn’t even realize he was 20 feet tall.  No, poor world.  Earth was not ready for a 20 foot squirrel.  These are the adventures of Chester, the totally normal mutant squirrel.            Chester wasn’t sure how long he was out, but he did know that he was behind on his quota of hiding acorns.  If he didn’t get on it fast, he wouldn’t have enough when he woke up from hibernation.  Chester shook off the last bits of sleep, sending twigs and leaves everywhere.  He bounded over to the treeline to find some more acorns.  With each step, he left a hole in the dirt where his paws were.            He tried to jump onto a tree in an attempt to climb up it. Instead, upon making contact with the tree trunk, he and the tree continued to follow Chester’s trajectory. He landed on the tree, now prone on the ground, his claws digging deep gashes through the bark.  Unaffected, Chester gathered the acorns that lay scattered and strewn about as a result of the tree falling over.  He put them in his mouth and hurried off to hide them somewhere clever.            Chester found a neatly manicured lawn, one of the remarkably few on the street with no Halloween or early Christmas decorations up at all.  He set to work digging at once, chucking massive clumps of dirt and grass behind him. A full grown man could have fit in the hole when Chester was finished.  He spit out the saved acorns, filling the whole a quarter of the way up with his bounty.  Satisfied, Chester set to work filling back in his hole.  The result was a packed crater about 5 feet in diameter sunken a foot below the rest of the lawn.            Some nearby grey squirrels watched Chester work and started chittering when he finished.  Chester looked up and noticed his brethren.  He chirped back at them.  This made them chitter all the louder, attracting more regular-sized squirrels onto the branch to laugh at the mutant squirrel and his obvious nut hole. Chester cocked his head, his tail twitched, knocking over some potted plants and a coiled up garden hose.  The mean squirrels in the tree started lobbing acorns at Chester.  Bullies can be so mean!  Chester looked to his side and noticed a perfectly trimmed evergreen bush.  He picked it up with both forepaws and launched it at the squirrels in the tree.            It took out the squirrels, their tree branch, and a mailbox where it landed on the far side of the street with a loud crash.  Behind him, a door opened and an angry man started shouting at Chester.  Being skittish around humans, Chester hastily bounded away, cracking the sidewalk where his paws hit it.  He tried to duck under a car but ended up just headbutting it, putting a large dent in the side of the parked SUV and shattering both passenger’s side windows. Dazed and still frightened of the increasingly agitated human, Chester ran into the street.  Loud car horns added to the man’s racket, and Chester did his best to dodge the cars.  He miraculously succeeded and got to safety unharmed.  Unfortunately, the drivers had all panicked and swerved to avoid the 20 foot long squirrel, and they had managed to find themselves plowed into parked cars, looking face to face with a driver who had been heading the opposite direction, or unscathed perpendicular to traffic with no way out of the predicament due to the carnage around them.            Chester soon forgot about the ordeal and happily pranced across the front lawns.  Then, he noticed a black cat watching him from behind the window.  He’d been here before.  The cat always batted at the window, trying to get him.  Somehow, Chester had grown to feel safe around this cat, because the window managed to keep the cat back.  He approached the window, and the cat pulled back, staring up at him.  Then, hissing, it launched itself at the window, trying to bat at him.  Chester tried to bat back at the cat, but his paw passed right through the window.  In shattered, and the cat found itself staring at a pitch black eye larger than its head.  Its fur shot up on end, and the cat bolted from its perch, heading for the basement. Clumsy in its haste, it missed its target and collided head-on with the door.  It managed to find the security of the basement on its second attempt.            Once the cat was out of sight, Chester lost interest and carried on down the street, carefree and happy.  A car drove by, and as it did, a little girl reached out of the open window and called “kitty!”  Chester turned to look at her, his whiskeys and tail twitching.  She quickly disappeared from sight, and Chester once again had nothing to do or focus on.            He meandered through town, generally causing a lot of stir.  Most people didn’t bother him, making sure to steer clear.  Chester was quite alright with humans, as long as they kept their distance.  He learned early on it was the humans who put all those seeds in the squirrel feeders. Granted, they were a little hard to get to, but they were very good.  Along his way, Chester ate several of these “squirrel feeders.”            Night fell, and Chester found himself near the city power plant.  The transformers and power lines hummed with the electricity coursing through them. It called to Chester like a song, somehow looking enticing and good to eat in the dim light.  Chester took a test nibble on the power line.  It shocked him, and he jerked back.  The cable fell to the ground in two pieces, and one third of the city went dark.  Twitching from the effects of the shock, Chester made his way out of the town, otherwise unaffected and unaware of the carnage in his wake.  The end.            Oh?  You want to hear what happened to Chester?  Last I heard, he made his way to the redwood forest in norther California, where he finally found trees sturdy enough to support him.  He’s living his best life.  Good for him. Back to Table of Contents (x)