The unexpected joy of the Squirrel Census
In September of 2012, when the internet was still mostly good and housing was still mostly affordable, a social media site served me a notice about something called “the Inman Park Squirrel Census Data Presentation and Spectacle.” The flyer, in tidy mid-century fonts overlaying a vintage illustration of a beaming man carpeted in woodland creatures, announced that the event — including a contest, a squirrel dance, and squirrel art — would take place around the corner from the Atlanta apartment I’d recently rented.
It was a few months after I’d moved back to town, fresh off a series of questionable professional choices and a few wildly unpleasant years in the company of Boston’s meanest doctors, hoping to pivot to a (then) less unpleasant career in public health.
I was ambivalent about being in Atlanta: I grew up in this city’s pleasant but bland suburbs, and as a chubby, ethnic, melancholy teen with no interest in youth soccer or Christian fellowshipping, I couldn’t wait to get out. When I escaped in the late 1990s, I swore I’d never come back.
