You know that fall is right around the corner when the squirrels shift into high gear.  Even as I write this they are swarming my neighborhood gathering food for winter.  I once met a squirrel, though, who didn’t have to work as hard as the ones who live on my street.  That’s because he had a special friend.  

I call her the Squirrel Whisperer.  Her family called her Auntie.  She was my wife’s great-aunt, and I have watched her tame rodents with her beguiling charm. Impossible, you say?  I once thought so myself, until I saw it with my own eyes.

The only time we saw Auntie is when we used to visit the family cabins nestled in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains where the squirrels run thicker than mud.

“Auntie has a pet squirrel,” my wife told me during one visit. She said this casually as if she were referring to a cat.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. Surely, I’d misunderstood. “Did you say a squirrel?”

“Yeah, it eats right from her hand,” she said.  This I had to see.

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