Timely Commentary

It was a beautiful autumn morning as I was walking back home after dropping off my oldest son at the bus stop. The ground was wet from an early morning rain shower, brown and red leaves littered the sidewalk ahead of me. Thump. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, someone came out of nowhere and tossed a bag of wet rags at me, hitting me just below the neck. I slowly turned to find the culprit, but to my surprise, there was no one there. I looked down at the sidewalk and saw a stunned squirrel lying there. Did someone bop him with a bag of wet rags, too?
It quickly occurred to me that the squirrel was, in fact, the bag of wet rags in question. Just as quickly, the squirrel popped back up onto all fours and scurried across a yard, climbing a nearby tree as quickly as possible. I looked up and saw a power line with a plastic protector about 10 feet overhead. The poor little squirrel must have been standing on that power line waiting for me to get in range before attacking me. Just kidding. The squirrel must have slipped on the plastic cover and fallen, just in time to thump me on the back.
These kinds of things must happen all the time.
But I doubt it.
Since the squirrel was not foaming at the mouth, as far as I could tell, and was not acting erratically (he did the obviously rational thing for a big tailed rodent to do, scurrying off and climbing a tree), so I did not think it was rabid.
A few minutes later, when I got back home, my wife had not yet left for work. I had her look at my back to check for scratches or bite marks. She saw none.
“Tell me, exactly, why I am checking for scratch marks?” my wife blithely asked.
“A squirrel hit me on the back.”
“A squirrel? What? Did you do something to provoke him?”
“No. It was not an intentional attack,” I told her. “he just fell from the power line I was walking under, just as I was walking by. Pure coincidence.”
“Why are we looking for a scratch?” She asked as I looked in the mirror at my upper back, searching, searching for any signs of injury.
“Rabies,” I said. “you can’t be too careful.”
“Well, actually, you can be too careful.” She said, helpfully.
“Whatever. Isn’t this a scratch.”
She so kindly came back over to check. “No.”
“Are you sure?” I peered more closely. Oh, it was worse. Much, much worse. Gray back hair.
Like every other red-blooded American male, as we get older, I do have a few back hairs here and there. Nothing to worry about. Until they turn gray. Even the hair on my head, what’s left of it, has only recently begun to go gray.
I put my shirt on, not telling my wife about the gray hair. If I don’t mention it, she will never know.
As she left for work, mercifully, I could hear her still laughing as she closed the door behind her.
I went to my office to do some Internet research on rabies, just so I could put my mind at ease.
It didn’t help. The County government web site had a warning about rabid animals and a link to a longer article from the county animal control department. The article warned residents that there has been a tremendous increase in the number of incidents of rabies in wild animals and went into great detail about how we can protect ourselves from this threat. My level of paranoia exceeded it’s previous high and my next move was to phone my physician.
“Hi. This is Dr. McKay. I’m a patient of Dr. B------.” (If you ever get a doctorate, the funnest time to use the title is when you call your physician; the receptionist will think you are a physician and treat you more professionally. So far, that has been about the only use of the title I’ve come up with).
After recounting the story with the medical secretary, she seemed appropriately alarmed. I was asked to wait on hold while the doctor was consulted.
A few minutes later, my lovely physician asked me to recount the story again, from the beginning. She does this out of overwhelming concern for my well-being and because she thinks I’m a smartass for using my Dr. title when I call her office.
A brief silence when I finished my story. Dr. B------ was trying to decide how much laughter she could get away with. She chose Medium. “This sounds like something that would make a good Seinfeld episode.”
She’s a very astute physician.
We laughed. Me at myself. She at me. In situations like this, trust me, they are not laughing with you, they are definitely laughing at you. She was careful to make sure there were no bleeding scratch or bite marks and when I told her there were none, she took the opportunity to laugh again (apparently the Hippocratic Oath includes something about “It’s okay to laugh at your patients, but once you are positive they are fine, then and only then can you really guffaw bigtime.”
It did take a few hours to get my paranoid meter down to near zero. The painful course of injections over several days is enough to keep anyone from thinking they have rabies. Unless the probability is pretty damn high.
A benefit that has resulted from the experience is that I have become a much more cautious pedestrian. As proof, I have not had any rodents come into contact with me since then. Who could ask for more than that?