The Fairy Queen, Beer, and a Brownie Rescue in Lynn Abbey's Squirrel Story
Book: It’s About Squirrels… | Author: Lynn Abbey
So we’re at the part where Nic decides to rescue a brownie from a dead hard drive using beer and Vienna sausages. I love this story.
The Squirrels Escalate
The milk-and-bread bowl Bobby’s mother swore by? Untouched. Lumpy and scummy by morning. The squirrels have leveled up from annoying to destructive. They’re stripping her windshield wipers like licorice. And then they start hurling themselves at her windows.
Picture this. A squirrel launches itself at the glass. Clings there, claws squealing against the window, before gravity pulls it down. Then another one does it. A tiny, furry siege.
Nic grabs a dish towel and runs outside flailing, which is exactly what you should not do when there are squirrel traps at the bottom of your steps. Bobby catches her just in time. They watch squirrels kamikaze the window together. Because squirrels don’t throw themselves at glass unless there’s a brownie trapped on the hard drive behind it.
Southern Brownies Need Southern Bait
Bobby spots the milk bowl and calls it out. Scottish brownies want milk and bread, he says, but southern brownies need beer and pork rinds. Or those little hot dogs in a can.
Nic freezes. Bobby says he’s joking. But is he? His mother tried the milk formula and it never worked. Brownies are nocturnal, apparently. So who knows the rules when you’re dealing with fairy creatures in central Florida.
Then comes an honest moment. Nic says she doesn’t belong here. Bobby opens his arms to the whole trailer park: “Nobody belongs here. We’re just passing through on our way up, or down.” When Nic asks which way she’s heading, he says: “Can’t tell yet.”
That line sits with you. Everyone in that trailer park is in transit. The only question is direction.
The Rube Goldberg Trap
Nic goes shopping. One can of beer. One can of Vienna sausages. And she builds the most ridiculous brownie trap you can imagine.
On a rocking chair: beer-filled plastic cups, sausage plates, noisy silverware, with the naked hard drive tied to the chair back. If anything touches this tower, it all crashes down. It’s a Home Alone trap built by someone who’s been alone too long, running on desperation and a very specific grocery list.
And it works.
The Rescue
Somewhere between midnight and dawn, the tower collapses. Nic is upright before the last fork hits the linoleum. She grabs her broom handle and runs.
Something dark and cat-sized darts behind the refrigerator. In the living room, two figures glow: the familiar silvery woman, and a man. The same derelict from the highway, only now he’s aristocratic with a flowing cape and angry eyes. He stalks through the front door. Not opens it. Through it.
The brownie emerges from under the fridge. Abbey refuses to make it cute. Spindly limbs. Leathery, sharp-featured face. It looks like something that lives under things. It bolts through the door, leaving nothing but dust bunnies on the doormat.
Titania Speaks
For the first time, the fairy woman talks to Nic. Not out loud. Her lips don’t move. But her voice is whisper-soft and perfectly clear.
She calls the brownies “the little ones” and says they know better, but “the ee-lek-trece-ity is so sweet and their minds are so small.” I love that she struggles with the word electricity. She can pass through walls and glow with her own light, but a human word for a human invention? That’s the hard part.
Getting trapped on a hard drive is “rare, very rare.” Rescue is usually impossible. And her tone shifts from grateful to worried. She’s afraid the brownies will hear about this rescue and think the danger is gone. “This happening was chance, not plan,” she tells Nic.
That’s such a parent thing to say. She’s not celebrating. She’s already thinking about the next time one of her little ones gets curious about the sweet electricity and doesn’t come back.
Nic offers to help again. Beer and sausages, anytime.
Titania raises her hand. Nic feels warm velvet against her cheek, the faintest scent of ozone like air after a thunderstorm. The fairy queen passes her hand over Nic’s eyes. And when Nic opens them, she’s alone.
What This Ending Does Right
Nobody’s life is fixed. Nic is still broke, still in a trailer, still sending resumes into nothing. The brownies are still in danger. The fairy queen is still worried.
But something happened. Something real. Nic was the one who didn’t mail the hard drive. She set out beer and sausages on a rocking chair at midnight. She said yes when something impossible asked for help.
That’s the whole story. Not a chosen one. Not a prophecy. Just a lonely woman with a dead hard drive and one can of beer, who turned out to be exactly what was needed.