Squirrels can run twenty miles per hour.
Humans can run twenty-seven miles per hour, but only if they are Usain Bolt. We had an advantage, because we weren’t running around with computers in our mouths. But the squirrel could climb. He went up trees, and down them. He went up buildings and onto ledges.
We split up, with Boris on one side of a building, me in the middle and Stinky on the end. We looked like a SWAT team, except that we didn’t have black T-shirts and we didn’t have guns and one of us had really soggy shoes from falling into the Potomac River.
Boris pulled something from one of his pockets. He didn’t carry nearly as much as Nanny X did, maybe because Stinky didn’t wear diapers. But he had a hook. I wasn’t just a fish hook, either. It was a small grappling hook, like the one he’d used to hold our boats together, with a rope hanging from it like a tail. He attached it to a tree and tried to swing it toward the next tree after the squirrel. The squirrel was too fast; I almost expected him to stick out his tongue at us.
“Okay, then,” said Boris. He pulled out a small green disc and sent it whizzing through the air. It opened into a net, and caught a fire hydrant.
The squirrel went back to the sidewalk and ran jerkily down the hill again.
We heard footsteps as Ali and Nanny X and Eliza caught up with us. Ali had someone on her back, and it didn’t take me long to figure out that the someone was Howard!
He jumped down and hugged me around the legs. I guess he’d missed me, too.
“You should have seen it,” said Ali. “He came in a drone.”
It wasn’t surprising that NAP owned a drone. Plus, it made sense that they used it for Howard. Chimps and monkeys have a proven record of being excellent fliers. They were sent into space before humans.
“Where’s our squirrel friend?” asked Nanny X.
“Up there.” Boris pointed to a tree that was growing out of a space in the sidewalk.
Nanny X made a sign with both of her pointer fingers, like she was doing some sort of boogie-woogie dance. Then she held up a package of baby wipes—real ones. Howard took off his gardening hat and handed it to Nanny X like he understood her sign language perfectly. He went to the tree and started to climb. When he reached a high branch, he swung for a minute like he was hanging from a trapeze. Then he disappeared into the leaves. We heard a rattling sound as the squirrel moved to the next tree, but Howard was right behind him. They made a bunch of noise, like they were arguing with their mouths full of Listerine.
“Eeeeeee,” Howard said, getting in the last word. He climbed down the tree, one-handed. In his other hand he carried Nanny X’s baby-wipe computer.
“Good work, Howard!” said Nanny X, handing him a banana.
You too, Jake, I thought to myself. Because I was the one who thought of calling Howard in the first place. Though I guess a diaper bag full of bananas meant that Nanny X might have planned on calling him, too. What I said out loud was: “There is something weird about that squirrel.”
“You think?” said Ali. This is called sarcasm. Because duh, there were lots of weird things about that squirrel.
“Did you notice the way it moved?” I said. “It didn’t move like normal squirrels do.”
In real life, squirrels have ankles that rotate. That’s why they don’t come down trees backward, the way humans and chimps do; they come running down headfirst.
But this squirrel came down in reverse. Plus, it didn’t have the smooth, hoppy motion most squirrels have.
“Yeti didn’t do his squirrel trick, either,” I said. At first I’d thought that meant something was wrong with Yeti. Now I thought it meant there was something wrong with the squirrel. “We should keep following him,” I added. “He’s suspicious.”
We were close to the bottom of the hill now. We were also close to people, and they seemed to be looking at us—at Howard, especially.
Eliza took off her sun bonnet and waved it around.
“Eliza, that’s a great idea,” I said.
We pulled some extra stuff out of Nanny X’s diaper bag. Soon Howard was wearing Eliza’s bonnet, an extra pair of her overalls and a pink shirt. I pointed to the stroller.
“Go ahead, Howard,” I said. “Get in.” Howard squeezed into the stroller next to Eliza. Nanny X pulled down the sun visor, and from a distance you couldn’t tell my sister’s seatmate was a chimpanzee. The squirrel came down the tree and ran the rest of the way down the hill, toward the Smithsonian Castle.
“That’s where my art exhibit is,” said Ali. But the squirrel switched directions again and turned right, toward the Hirshhorn Museum.
We followed him, past an ice-cream truck and about a bazillion people. Then the squirrel crossed another street and disappeared into the Hirshhorn’s outdoor sculpture garden.
Ali and I have spent a lot of time at the sculpture garden. We like to play hide-and-seek there, even though it’s supposed to be a spot for “quiet contemplation.” The squirrel was playing hide-and-seek now.
“Squirrel, Yeti,” I said. But he just looked in the stroller at Howard. Howard looked back like he was thinking Now what?
That’s what I wanted to know, too.