Beautiful Creatures(91)

I opened the door, expecting the usual commotion, but today the house was noticeably quiet. A bad sign. “Aunt Prue?”

I heard her familiar drawl coming from the back of the house. “We’re on the sun porch, Ethan.”

I ducked under the doorway of the screened-in porch to see the Sisters scuttling around the room, carrying what looked like little hairless rats.

“What the heck are those?” I said without even thinking.

“Ethan Wate, you watch your mouth, or I’ll have ta wash it out with soap. You know better than ta use pro-fanity,” Aunt Grace said. Which, as far as she was concerned, included words like panties, naked, and bladder.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. But what is that you’ve got in your hand?”

Aunt Mercy rushed forward and thrust her hand out, with two little rodents sleeping in it. “They’re baby squirrels. Ruby Wilcox found them in her attic last Tuesday.”

“Wild squirrels?”

“There are six of ’em. Aren’t they just the cutest things you ever saw?”

All I could see was an accident waiting to happen. The idea of my ancient aunts handling wild animals, babies or otherwise, was a frightening thought. “Where did you get them?”

“Well, Ruby couldn’t take care of ’em—” Aunt Mercy started.

“On account a that awful husban’ a hers. He won’t even let her go ta the Stop & Shop without tellin’

him.”

“So Ruby gave them ta us, on account a the fact that we already had a cage.”

The Sisters had rescued an injured raccoon after a hurricane and nursed it back to health. Afterward, the raccoon ate Aunt Prudence’s lovebirds, Sonny and Cher, and Thelma put the raccoon out of the house, never to be spoken of again. But they still had the cage.

“You know squirrels can carry rabies. You can’t handle these things. What if one of them bites you?”

Aunt Prue frowned. “Ethan, these are our babies and they are just the sweetest things. They wouldn’t bite us. We’re their mammas.”

“They are just as tame as they can be, aren’t y’all?” Aunt Grace said, nuzzling one of them.

All I could imagine was one of those little vermin latching onto one of the Sisters’ necks and me having to drive them to the emergency room to get the twenty shots in the stomach you have to get if you’re bitten by a rabid animal. Shots that I’m sure at their age might kill any one of them.

I tried to reason with them, a complete waste of time. “You never know. They’re wild animals.”

“Ethan Wate, clearly you are not an animal lover. These babies would never hurt us.” Aunt Grace scowled at me disapprovingly. “And what would you have us do with ’em? Their mamma is gone.

They’ll die if we don’t take care of ’em.”

“I can take them over to the ASPCA.”

Aunt Mercy clutched them against her chest protectively. “The ASPCA! Those murderers. They’ll kill ’em for sure!”

“That’s enough talk about the ASPCA. Ethan, hand me that eye dropper over there.”

“What for?”

“We have ta feed them every four hours with this little dropper,” Aunt Grace explained. Aunt Prue was holding one of the squirrels in her hand, while it sucked ferociously on the end of the dropper. “And once a day, we have ta clean their little private parts with a Q-tip, so they’ll learn ta clean themselves.”

That was a visual I didn’t need.

“How could you possibly know that?”

“We looked it up on the E-nternet.” Aunt Mercy smiled proudly.

I couldn’t imagine how my aunts knew anything about the Internet. The Sisters didn’t even own a toaster oven. “How did you get on the Internet?”

“Thelma took us ta the library and Miss Marian helped us. They have computers over there. Did you know that?”

“And you can look up just about anything, even dirty pictures. Every now and again, the dirtiest pictures you ever saw would pop up on the screen. Imagine!” By “dirty,” Aunt Grace probably meant naked, which I would’ve thought would keep them off the Internet forever.

“I just want to go on record as saying I think this is a bad idea. You can’t keep them forever. They’re going to get bigger and more aggressive.”

“Well, of course we aren’t plannin’ on lookin’ after ’em forever.” Aunt Prue was shaking her head, as if it was a ridiculous thought. “We’re going ta let ’em go in the backyard just as soon as they can look after themselves.”

“But they won’t know how to find food. That’s why it’s a bad idea to take in wild animals. Once you let them go, they’ll starve.” This seemed like an argument that would appeal to the Sisters and keep me out of the emergency room.

“That’s where you’re wrong. It tells all about that on the E-nternet,” Aunt Grace said. Where was this Web site about raising wild squirrels and cleaning their private parts with Q-tips?

“You have ta teach ’em ta gather nuts. You bury nuts in the yard and you let the squirrels practice findin’ ’em.”

I could see where this was going. Which led to the part of the day that had me in the backyard burying mixed cocktail nuts for baby squirrels. I wondered how many of these little holes I’d have to dig before the Sisters would be satisfied.