Almost. Almost. The little squirrel was on the park bench beside her, nearly within reaching range of the peanut she was holding. Of course, she could simply blink and make him understand that she was no threat. In fact, she could even make him speak. But then there was the problem that squirrels, once you gave them human speech, never stopped talking. Little chatterboxes, the lot of them. They did it even when they were speaking squirrelese, of which she had a passable understanding. Not that she could speak it herself, or that she wanted to, but she had a good general idea of what was being said. The problem was that squirrelese was a fluid language, constantly changing. What meant one thing this moment, could mean something entirely different in the next, and unless one was a squirrel one could not keep up. As it was, there were distinct nuances that were missed unless one was a bushy tailed rodent because the tail was as much part of the language as the chittering.
So she could have spoken to him, reassured him, even had a conversation with him had she been able to manage to get a word in edgewise. But Jeannie did none of that. Today she was planning on letting nature act as nature should, which meant patiently waiting. Holding the peanut stock still while the squirrel assessed the potential threat and simultaneously weighed the possible benefit to getting the peanut. Fortunately, he was a park squirrel, so he was far more inclined to take food that was offered. Given the chance to be lazy, if they could, squirrels usually took it.
There he was, mere feet away from giving Jeannie the end goal of her personal game, when his ears suddenly twitched. She heard the sound he had caught immediately after he did, but it was too late to reassure the squirrel. Something large was coming his way, making noise, and he reacted as a squirrel should. He ran, giving a warning call even as he scrambled up a tree.
“Oh poo!” Jeannie pouted, irritated that her diversion had been ruined. Her head whipped around so fast that her ponytail smacked the side of her cheek, but she found the source of the problem right away. It would have been difficult not to. He was rather large.
He was also not human. A fact she divined half a second after spotting him. Not from the way he looked, but the way he smelled. He smelled green. There was just no other way to put it. There was also the slightest tang of metal in the air around him. Which could only add up to one conclusion, and that confused Jeannie. The others that she had met of his kind were certainly not this tall. Perhaps he was some sort of mutant or freak, even among his own kind. That would explain much. But it did nothing to alleviate her pique, and it most certainly did not intimidate her. She had taken on larger than him!
“You,” she called to him in aggravated tones, “have scared away my squirrel.”