Squirrels.

Do you ever get texts that despite the fact that they would seem completely ridiculous to a third party observer make perfect sense in the context of your life and are 100% imaginable? Well, I got one of those texts today from my Dad. Before you read it, you must understand three things:
1.) Daisy is the name of my cat.
2.) There is a field/hill/ditch thing behind our house. Daisy loves to hunt in this field.
3.) My youngest brother Lance has an irrational fear of small mammals, which includes, but is not limited to: squirrels, mice, rabbits, and guinea pigs.

So with this in mind, I received this text from my Dad:

"Daisy just brought a baby rabbit into the house. The bully. The full grown ones are too quick for her. Lance is freaking out about rabbits now."

Brought such a chuckle to my heart.
I think Lance's intense fear of these types of creatures first sprouted from our day trips to Sand Harbor at Lake Tahoe. Because of all the food the beach visitors bring, the squirrels that live in the trees there are seriously OBESE. Their stomachs literally drag in the sand as they scour its surface, searching for more food to maintain their abdominal mass. They are bold, too. They have long since forsaken their inhibitions regarding the human race and now go in full, shameless pursuit of their food.
We once watched my sister's friend's entire lunch get dragged away into the bushes by one of these obese creatures. We were so amazed at the speed the squirrel was traveling, given the size of the lunch and the belly it was dragging, that we just sat there in our beach chairs and watched it go.
So, understandably, my brother came to fear squirrels.
But I may also be partly to blame. On one of our trips there, I was feeling particularly bored and in a teasing mood so I decided to make Lance believe that I could speak to the squirrels. He was being cranky, so I hoped to use this technique to encourage good behavior.
I told him I could understand what the squirrels were saying and that they were planning to come and climb on his head and chase him on the beach if he continued to not listen to his mother. Then, every time a squirrel got close to us, I told him that I told that squirrel to come close. I even made little squeaky noises to speak to the squirrels and pretended to cock my ear, listening for their response. It was pretty convincing.
But it did not produce the good behavior I had hoped it would. In fact, it pretty much back fired. He ended up going into a borderline panic attack every time a squirrel even moved an inch in his direction and then would proceed to yell at me "Stop telling it to do that!"
 It got out of control. My mom eventually forced me to tell him the truth and after a few days of reiterating, "No, Cara does NOT in fact know how to talk to squirrels," he finally relaxed a little.
But nevertheless, the fear remains to this day.
Bless his heart.