Today the weather was gorgeous; when I got home I laid out on our deck and started to read a book but quickly dozed off with my left ring finger positioned in such a way that it hurt like the Charles Dickens when I woke up an hour later. Is that a run-on sentence? I watched a squirrel scitter across the fence which circles our back yard. When I was in middle school we had a pet squirrel. His name was Buster. One spring morning my dad was working in the back yard and these two baby squirrels ran up to his leg and wanted to play. He put them back in the woods and returned to work, but minutes later they were back. Their mother had been killed by a car (we think) and they were orphans, happy, scampery orphans without any fear of man. All of this happened while I was away at softball practice (or some similar middle school happening) and when my dad picked me up he had an ice cream pail with these two baby squirrels in it. We named them Chip and Dale, but eventually one of them died so we had to rename the surviving squirrel Buster. He became our pet. And when I say pet, I mean it. He loved us and we loved him, and we cuddled him and played with him and taught him little squirrel tricks. He was not dirty, he was not vicious, he was a friend. One day we had to let him go back into the wild. It was sad, but the right thing to do. The first night after we let him go he stayed right there in his squirrel bed. Maybe the second night too. But eventually he remembered that he was a wild creature, and he climbed up into a tree, and then he was gone. We would see him from time to time, but he wasn’t a pet anymore, and we weren’t friends of his. It was man and nature, back in the original order of things. But we would always remember him and years later some of us would write about him in our blogs.
So there, even though I am tired and would rather take a very early bed time, I went ahead and told you a cozy little story about friendly forest animals. Now off to bed, all of you.
9 Comments
hey, dude. that first sentence is not a run-on, but there is a comma missing.
and yay for pets! cool!
Hmm, just one comma? Where would one place said comma? After “book”? How about a semi-colon after “gorgeous” and then getting rid of that “and”? And still adding the necessary comma. Normally I don’t feel too much apprehension about punctuation, but I’ve started reading Eats, Shoots, & Leaves again and it’s got me a little bit punc-conscious!
I didn’t know that you guys had a pet squirrel! Oh, the things Shawn doesn’t tell me…
Oh yes, and he was a good one, as far as pet squirrels go!
that’s a really nice story and pretty amazing, I didnt think squirrels could behave like pets.
The sentence is fine, but I’m probably not the best to judge…
i remember him! he lived in your washer/dryer/ bathroom. he was awesome.
comma after home: when I got home, …
and the semicolon is a stylistic choice. I tend to go for it, but that’s b/c semicolons are my FAVORITE>
that should be a period. oops.
Ah, beck, we loved that squirrel! Remember we used to have him sleep in the cat carrier??
Alex, thanks for the comment! Don’t say you’re not the best to judge–you know english better than I do.
Molly, thanks for the punctuation coaching! I think I’m going to go with the semicolon, as I too have a bit of a crush on it.