Doc
isn’t even sure why
he did it. For days afterwards, people would talk about it,
then smile and
shake their heads and just say “Oh, that Doc…”
The whole thing came
up on the spur of the moment. Doc and Mrs. Doc were planning
to go out of town
for a few days and needed several hundred dollars in cash, so
Doc dropped by
the bank to take it out.
He
drew Ardis Richardson as his teller, after he wound his
way through the bank’s roped rat maze, and told her how much
he needed.
Then, on an impulse,
he leaned forward and whispered, “Ardis, I need that in small,
unmarked bills,
please.”
“Unmarked, Doc?”
“My squirrel’s life
depends on it.”
Ardis’s
mouth dropped open. That should have stopped Doc,
but it didn’t.
“They said if I
wanted to see him alive again, the bills would have to be
unmarked.”
She stared.
“Have you ever seen
how cute he is when he sits up and eats a nut and his whiskers
twitch? I mean,
right now I can picture his big fluffy tail and those eyes …
those eyes…. Oh
my…”
“Doc
… I didn’t know,” she said.
He nodded sadly. “I
can hardly bear looking at his little squirrel bed, sitting
there empty, and
his squirrel food dish, with only half his meal gone. I really
have no choice.”
Ardis
gave him the money. The sheriff came by Doc’s office
to make sure everything was all right. Mrs. Miller across the
street from
Steve’s house sent a five-dollar donation to Doc to help
rescue the squirrel.
Pop Walker down at the Rest of Your Life home volunteered to
get his gun and
polish off every squirrel-napper in the county.
Doc, you see,
doesn’t have a squirrel.
Mrs.
Doc thought this weekend away from home came not a
moment too soon.