The Bathroom Challenge by Alan Bunker

I had just arrived home from my night school class to a telephone call from my dear aunt who lived up the street. In a near-hysterical voice, she implored me to come to her house immediately for she had an emergency. In less than a minute I was standing in her living room. Trembling in her bathrobe, she described a startling incident that occurred just minutes before in her upstairs bathroom…

After having just settled into the warm, soothing waters of her evening bath, she heard an unusual gurgling coming from the recently flushed toilet. Turning to the source of the sound, she saw, to her amazement, two small, brown paws clinging to the rim of the toilet seat. They were soon followed by the slick head of a wet rodent.

Not taking time to offer a positive identification of the creature, my aunt leaped from the tub in one bound and exited the bathroom while snatching her bathrobe along the way. Once downstairs, she grabbed the phone and summoned me to her house.

Listening in disbelief that a rodent had entered her bathroom through a toilet, I, nonetheless, developed a hasty plan to remove the intruder while doing the least damage to the bathroom, myself and the rodent. A minute later I was bravely ascending the stairs donning a pair of rubber gloves and carrying a stiff brown paper bag. Would I meet the bathroom challenge?

As I slowly cracked open the bathroom door, I saw a wet, nearly drowned squirrel sitting upon the edge of the toilet seat. Apparently weakened by the violent force of the flush that sucked it into the toilet bowl from the roof's soil stack, the dazed squirrel did not notice my stealthy entrance. In a flash, I grabbed the squirrel behind the neck with my right gloved hand while I opened the bag with my left. As I thrust him toward the bag's opening, the rodent spread his arms and legs, thus preventing him from being 'bagged'. Instinctively, I turned him sideways to counter his move. The squirrel, in turn, instinctively turned his head and bit my right thumb. In my pain and panic, I dropped the squirrel and the bag on the floor whereupon the squirrel ran directly into the apparent security of the bag. I immediately grabbed it, rolled it closed, dashed from the bathroom, down the stairs (without much explanation!) and out the back door where I released the squirrel into the chilly darkness.

Although anxious about my wildlife encounter and the ensuing tetanus shot received at the hospital emergency room, I was comforted in knowing that I (and the squirrel) had met and survived the bathroom challenge!