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>> Will this neurotic Montreal squirrel become the next international cartoon character celebrity?

DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT: Scaredy’s protective gear

SPOILER ALERT!: Scaredy Squirrel insists that you read all his books—Scaredy Squirrel, Scaredy Squirrel Makes a Friend, and Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach—before reading this article, which reveals a lot of top secret information. And while you’re buying the books, you might as well pick up some anti-bacterial soap, toothpaste and 65 SPF sunscreen, since Scaredy also insists on clean hands, teeth and the appropriate solar protection before setting out on any of his adventures.

Here is a list of things Scaredy Squirrel has been afraid of since his first Canadian appearance in 2006: tarantulas, poison ivy, green Martians, killer bees, germs, sharks, walruses, bunnies, beavers, piranhas, Godzilla, flocks of seagulls, tribes of jelly fish, herds of sea monsters, packs of pirates, tons of falling coconuts and mobs of lobsters.

NOT SO NEUROTIC: Watt

Fortunately, Scaredy always has a plan. The first was the simplest: never leave his tree. It had advantages: great view, plenty of nuts, safe place and no scary things. But there were disadvantages: same old view, same old nuts, same old place.

Because scary stuff can still happen, Scaredy always has back-up plans, and because Scaredy has a lot of time and imagination, they’re usually complicated and filled with weird gear (a protective French fry to distract seagulls, air freshener to disguise squirrel smell).

Often these plans fail, so Scaredy has a last resort plan: play dead. He resorts to it enough that Scaredy has taken to playing dead for about two hours a day, as part of his daily schedule. He’s a very prepared squirrel, who has managed to attract a lot of fans.

Global appeal

Here is a list: readers from nine other countries, including France, Poland and Norway; the school-age son of Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), who has adopted “same old nuts, same old place” as his personal motto; The Richard & Judy show, considered the U.K version of Oprah, which has recommended Scaredy Squirrel as a Christmas gift; Harvard University Bookstore, which recommends Scaredy Squirrel as a graduation gift; the classrooms of children who have sent Scaredy creator Mélanie Watt pictures of themselves lying on the floor, playing dead; a writer from The Daily Show who recently wrote Watt to tell her he’d bought copies of Scaredy Squirrel for everyone at the show.

“He wanted me to know, in case I noticed a blip in sales in New York City,” Watt tells me at the Montreal apartment she shares with her husband, Ernesto Cadenas, and her parrot Kiwi. So far, she’s received no pictures of Daily Show staff playing dead. But she has received letters from fans of all ages, and numerous North American awards. Some of these are on the wall of a studio that’s beginning to look a like a Scaredy exhibit. On a bookshelf, there’s a Korean translation of the first book, and next to that is a stuffed dead squirrel.

Two days before I met with Watt, Corus Entertainment, the corporation that promotes Franklin the Turtle, announced plans to develop Scaredy Squirrel as a “multimedia entertainment property.” These plans will include animated shorts for on-air, online and on-mobile distribution. The dead squirrel is a merch prototype, as are two things Scaredy is scared of, a stuffed germ (in “a protective plastic barrier”), and a stuffed piranha.

Out of the nut tree

Watt is friendly, open and shows little of the skittishness you might expect from the creator of a neurotic urban wildlife creature. She will, however, admit to a few compulsive behaviours. “I don’t like touching poles in the metro,” she confesses. She travels with anti-bacterial gel. She keeps the TV on without sound during our interview, and leaps up once to pre-emptively change the channel from TLC, because “around this time, sometimes Birth Stories comes on.”

FAIL PROOF:
Scaredy plays dead

She also admits to a period in her life when she was a tad reclusive. She and Cadenas have a country place near Valleyfield, and for a while, she never wanted to leave. Since 2001, after taking a graphic design program at UQÀM, she’d been successfully writing children’s books (Leon the Chameleon, Augustine) and successfully working from home.

Then Scaredy appeared. “He has gotten me way out of my nut tree.” Touring has forced Watt to do things she would never have previously considered, “like take a plane by myself.” The day after our interview, she’ll be leaving on a tour of Western Canada to promote Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach. In April, however, she did something a little more in keeping with her nature, a North American blog tour.

At Web sites like Hip Librarians Book blog and Bookbuds, Watt and Scaredy answered questions, occasionally interrupted in red type by Chester, a narcissistic self-promoting cat from another series Watt has since started. Once the Western tour is over, Watt will continue work on the next Scaredy installment: a story about Scaredy’s night fears. The one thing she knows for sure is that, at some point, he’ll play dead. “It’s about being still, and being able to let go. I think that’s an important message for kids to hear.”

She’ll also begin work on the Scaredy Squirrel animated shorts. Watt is still deciding on essential questions, like whether or not Scaredy will speak. So there’s a good chance that his Web presence will pre-date his first television appearance. No one knows exactly when Scaredy is due to become a skittish but ubiquitous cyber creature. But there’s a good possibility that, by next Christmas, this Montreal-born squirrel will be playing dead on bedroom floors around the world.

Scaredy Squirrel by
Mélanie Watt, Kids Can Press,
hc, 32 pp, $16.95