Waterloo couple goes nuts for squirrels
Norman Street squirrel diorama is a labour of love — and laughter
WATERLOO — Their plaid wallpaper is a vinyl placemat.
Their Mason jar-lid solar panels rest upon wood-shim shingles, running wires and night lights through a drill hole to a plastic plant-stand chandelier below.
Their luxurious front garden home on Norman Street is a hollowed-out log atop a concrete pedestal Katie Hitchman scooped up from the curb years ago. And that’s just fine. They are, after all, just a little finger-puppet family of pretend squirrels.
The dainty little diorama makes quite a recycled sesquicentennial sight in front of Hitchman’s home on the well-treed street.
Drooping pink and white daisies to the right. Radiant buttercups to the left.
How many real-life squirrels run wild in branch offices above this bushy-tailed scene, which arrived to overlook new sidewalks only a week ago?
“Oh, thousands,” Hitchman said on Tuesday morning.
Thousands? Maybe that’s an acorn-laden exaggeration, she admitted. But they do have too many in these parts. It’s a squirrel jungle around her home, where her old dog Miller once accidentally deep-sixed a nut-obsessed tree rodent years ago.
Squirrels can be pests. They gorge themselves on her tomato plants.
“It’s not like I have a love affair with squirrels by any stretch of the imagination,” said Hitchman, who was inspired after seeing a similar miniature squirrel theatre a few years ago in Port Elgin.
“I’m not artistic, but I like to be creative.”
And she loves her four grandkids. So her little squirrel scenesetter has two grandparents, Katie and Steve, sitting by a fireplace while watching grand kids. One kid holds a broom. One is just kind of goofing around.
Two more squirrel grandkids — found in a 1970s toy line she purchased online — will be added.
So Eli, Oliver, Austin and Natalie will be represented.
There’s also a skunk. Bats and mice roam the tiny attic. A squirrel caresses an acorn on top of the chimney. At night, the chandelier shines a circle of light on the log home, hollowed out by one of Katie’s woodworking friends.
Passersby will comment. No one says she is nuts.
A cheeky relative remarked she has too much time on her hands.
Hitchman, who got busy on her squirrelly endeavour a year ago, isn’t bothered by peanut-gallery wisecracks.
Her Norman Street squirrel diorama is a labour of love and laughter. So you can look all you want. You can even touch, if you like.
“Anyone is welcome to move things around,” she said.