Doug Clark: When nature calls, terror can follow

Today we explore that old saying we’ve all heard a million times, you know, the one that goes …

Look before you leak!

You can bet Phyllis Goodwin will never forget this adage after surviving her near-death Attack of the Toilet Squirrel.

Granted, “near-death” is a bit of a stretch, but only because Goodwin apparently has the cardiac constitution of a 20-year-old marathoner.

If what you’re about to read had happened to me, I would’ve:

1. Shrieked like a little girl.

2. Dropped toes-up onto the bathroom floor, just like poor bloated Elvis.

The bottom line is that Goodwin, 74, experienced the deep-seated horror that every bathroom and outhouse user has contemplated at one time or another.

I’m talking about the fear that while sitting in such an exposed and dangling condition, something creepy and crawly – possibly Satan himself or a giant spider – will slither up and BITE YOU!!!

What happened to Goodwin proves that this can happen.

“There was something splashing in my toilet that I was sitting on,” said Goodwin.

Yikes.

Her tale of terror took place in the early dark hours of last Tuesday. Goodwin lives alone in her two-story “dream home” that sits on Lake Pend Oreille property she bought 30 years ago.

The house, she added, looks directly across the sparkling lake at her hometown of Sandpoint.

Goodwin does live with a companion. Gina, a cute, fluffy bichon, can’t be much of a watchdog in that she dozed through the entire ordeal that began when nature called Goodwin out of bed.

She padded into the bathroom without turning on the light, sat down and, well, commenced to relieve herself.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.

Then came an alien commotion in the commode followed immediately by Goodwin’s terrifying realization that she wasn’t the first to get there.

“There were sounds going on,” she said.

And noises. And swirling. And …

Goodwin jumped off as if the toilet seat had suddenly turned into a hot plate.

She flipped the light switch, thinking, for some reason, “Oh, my gawd, there’s a bat in the toilet.”

Nope. No bat. The intruder was a gray squirrel that “shot out of the toilet” like a ballistic missile.

Goodwin couldn’t believe her eyes. She quickly shut the bathroom door and went back to bed, but “couldn’t go back to sleep.”

No kidding.

This is one tough customer, though, and with good reason. Although she grew up about 10 miles northeast of Sandpoint, Goodwin spent 45 years living in New York City.

Heck with squirrels. Dodging Big Apple cabbies would steel anyone’s nerves.

Goodwin had several of her former Sandpoint High classmates reeling when she told them about her squirrel encounter over lunch in Coeur d’Alene the other day.

“We were incredulous,” said Helen Newton, one of Goodwin’s childhood pals. “All of us were laughing so hard that I’m sure the rest of the patrons in the restaurant were staring at us.”

In the end, though, everything worked out for the best.

Goodwin didn’t see the squirrel at first when she finally decided to investigate. What she did find was a telltale damp trail leading across the bathroom floor and into a closet.

She looked inside and there it was, “dry and alive and looking at me.”

And with indignation, no doubt.

Goodwin did her best to make things right. She opened a balcony door to give her guest an easy escape route.

Sure enough, when she checked again her Ty-D-Bol friend had fled the scene.

Meanwhile, Goodwin is counting her blessings. At least she didn’t have “to go to the ER and explain how” she got a squirrel bite on the you-know-where.

Doug Clark can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or dougc@spokesman.com.