Little Johnny, do you hear?

Little Johnny, do you hear?
2011.05.25.

Little Johnny,
do you hear?
Come to me,
come, when I say,
helter-skelter,
sit on on my knee,
but don't you stir,
or otherwise-
I just might nip,
You see, like this!
So, does it hurt?
Well now, don't shout,
but close your mouth
and open wide your ears,
open wide those little doors;
now you'll see, what comes here,
flitting through your little head ...
a butterfly gay.
Gay butterfly, small tale,
flutter into Johnny's head!

We’ve received a local report today about three orphaned ground-squirrels at the Ferihegy Airport. Their mother has been seen nowhere and those poor three teeny tiny gophers were there under in the sunshine. As the information about the whereabouts of the babies was quite precise - they were on a meadow right next to a taxi stand - I got in a car and left. Saving ground-squirrels… do you get it?
At the given location I asked a taxi driver who was able to show me the three little gophers right away, they were gasping under some banana peels and were nibbling pepper and salted peanuts.
They were really small and taxi drivers said that they hadn’t seen the squirrel momma since morning. Needless to say it’s a pretty nice gopher-colony, they are very tame terefore careless so it often happens that a kestrel catches one each of them. We were discussing about what we should do because normally we don’t grab a wild animal out of its natural environment except if it’s necessary, but those babies were really defenceless so we agreed that I carried them away and as soon as they would be more self-sufficient we let them back to the same place they had been taken away.
It was easy to catch the first one but it alerted the others. One would not even think how loud a small animal like this can whistle. As a result of this the others run in the hole they had dashed. Ok, it wasn’t really a ’run’ run as they were teeny and bearish but I’m not that good in catching ground-squirrels by bare hands, anyway, they were quicker than me.
Standoff.
I have a box with a whispering lonely baby in it.
Two other in the hole.
Do the maths its not good at all.
I was about to let the cought one back to its siblings when Sanyi arrived.
Sanyi the taxi driver.
Who trained himself to the top from ground-squirrels in his free time. He knew everything – I mean EVERYTHING – about gophers. He knew what they do and when, who likes who and when they feed their babies. And he knew that those brats needed to be fed so I had no choice to carry them away anyway. I said sure, I had the goodwill but they were in the hole. They were flattered, scared because the third twin had alerted them.
’No worries’ – said Sanyi the taxi driver – ’ I’ll have them out immediately’
’Sure, because it works like this’ – I thought grumpy – ’ On some days I can’t even call my own dogs in, but this guy will have those gophers out. Sure thing…’
He started to squelch while he was rattling a pack of salted peanuts and gophers started coming out of their holes. I mean and I’m not kidding the ground was moving and gophers were coming from all directions, peeping out of their holes, standing on two legs like suricates. Then they came to Sanyi just because he had called them. It’s not easy to frighten me but it was pretty scary like ’The Birds’ by Hitchcock except that this time it was with gophers.
I didn’t have time for gazing because Sanyi let me know that my two brats had come out so I had to put my palm on the top of the hole so they couldn’t get back to the hole and I managed to collect them beside their sibling.
By the time I looked up the place was empty there was only Sanyi who run out of salted peanuts…

by Meggyes