Jens new home was not overly large but it did have an extra bedroom he had no need for so, in between working in the field and reading the survival guides, he began converting the spare bedroom. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture in there that he needed to move out so that was the first bit he tackled. Dismantling the bed took the longest amount of time only because he had to find the right tools to unscrew the bolts that were holding it together. That done, he covered the floor in about six inches of dirt. He took the larger house plants and transplanted them into the dirt floor, not caring about the tile beneath. He found a large, fallen tree stump that he loaded into his wheelbarrow and brought inside to add to the room.

After a few days of work he felt it was sufficiently done that he enacted the second phase in his plan.

“Charlie,” he called out from the back patio, holding out a handful of peanuts.

Right on cue, the squirrel he’d been habituating to his presence came scampering out of the hedge and right up to him. Most of its fear of him had vanished over the last few days and it now ate right out of his hands, even letting him pet it.

In a smooth motion, Jens scooped Charlie up. The squirrel immediately began to squirm and try to escape but Jens had too good a grip on it. He carried it inside, all the while still offering Charlie peanuts, and brought the squirrel to the spare room he’d converted into an enclosure for it. Once inside, he shut the door behind him and then set Charlie down.

The squirrel darted around the room, looking for a way out, scrabbling at the window for a good while. Jens figured this would be a rough transition for Charlie but Jens was determined to have a pat of some kind, just something he could look forward to coming home to and interacting with.

Eventually, Charlie found the pile of mixed nuts Jens had left out on a plate near the stump and Charlie calmed down a bit. Jens stayed there with Charlie for a few hours as the sun set.

“Good night, Charlie,” Jens said as he left to go to his own bedroom. “See you in the morning.”

For the first time since all of this had started, Jens slept well and awoke feeling refreshed. First thing he did was go and check on Charlie.

“Good morning, Charlie,” he said as he opened the door a sliver to make sure Charlie wasn’t right by the door, ready to escape.

When he didn’t see Charlie he slipped into the room quickly and shut the door behind himself.

“Breakfast.”

He shook the peanuts in his hand like he used to do outside on the patio but Charlie didn’t come rushing over to him.

“Charlie?”

There was a small burrow dug out beneath the stump but upon inspection Jens found it both shallow and empty besides a few nuts. Jens checked around the plants, in case Charlie was hiding among the foliage but with similar results.

Could he have chewed a hole in the wall to escape? It was a thought he hadn’t considered until now but there were no signs of any damage to the walls.

“Come on,” Jens said to no on in particular. “Is it because I turned Charlie into a pet?”

Just in case he was wrong and Charlie was still somewhere in the room, Jens counted the nuts in the burrow and then left the room. He’d check in on Charlie later that evening.

He had to force himself to eat breakfast, with the probably loss of charlie weighing heavily on his mind. He had no appetite but knew he wouldn’t last long out in the field without eating something. So, he reconstituted some freeze dried scrambled eggs and made some pancakes to go along with it. The pancakes were pretty good. The scrambled eggs, not so much.

With breakfast out of the way, he loaded up the wagon he’d found in the shed with the sprouts he’d be planting today and walked over to the field, towing the wagon behind him. Each row was planted according to the instructions left behind by the previous owner of Jens home and he was just trusting that they knew what they were doing. Today he was planting bean sprouts, it seemed. Planting them wasn’t difficult but it did take time and by the time he was done with the last sprout his neck and back were aching from being bent down over the ground.

He wanted a break but it wasn’t lunchtime yet so instead he walked over to the section of the field where he hadn’t yet tilled the ground. He had a few gallons of fuel left before he’d need to find more cars to siphon gas from so he filled the tiller, started it up, and tilled the next few rows worth of the field so that it would be ready for planting tomorrow.

Tilling was slow work because he had to be wary of large rocks. The middle of the field was the worst, and he was glad to be past that point, but there were still occasional stones that were too large to leave. Fortunately none of them had been too large for him to lift and remove on his own. Jens didn’t want to think about what he’d do if he ever found a truly massive boulder or something.

Some movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention and he glanced over. A few crows had gathered in the section of the field he’d recently planted. A moment was all it took for him to realize they were pecking at, and eating, the fresh bean sprouts he’d just planted.

“HEY!” he shouted, letting the tiller die as he began running over at the crows and waving his arms at them.

The birds took flight at once and he was relieved to see that they hadn’t done much damage yet. The birds, however, didn’t fly far and nestled into the nearby trees. It was obvious to him that they’d be back the moment he was far enough away for them to come and get at the sprouts.

Why couldn’t it have been pests like these birds, instead of pets like his fish and Charlie, that got vanished away?

He figured now was as good a time as any to take his lunch break so he grabbed the food he’d packed for lunch out of the wagon and sat down near the sprouts to begin eating. While he ate, he continued to wonder about the disappearance of pets. None of it made any sense but the fact that it was all other people and their pets was what stood out to him in his mind. The little hope he’d had earlier that Charlie was just hiding somewhere was all but gone now. It made sense that if the pets were all removed before, that any new pet he got would be disappeared as well.

From the trees, the crows cawed at him and flew a few laps around the field.

“I should make them my pets next, then they won’t be here to bother me.”

He hadn’t been serious about it at first but as soon as he said it, Jens knew what he needed to do. He pulled out the bag of peanuts he still carried around and, walking to the edge of the field nearest the trees, poured out a pile of peanuts, then walked back to where he sat before. It didn’t take long for the crows to fly down and investigate the peanuts and soon they were eagerly pecking away at them.

“You’re all my pets now,” Jens said and got back to work.

When he returned home that evening he found that there was still no change in Charlie’s room. The squirrel was gone. He didn’t have the energy to dismantle the room just yet but figured he’d need to put it all back the way it used to be since he didn’t have need of a room like this without Charlie. For now, he just shut the door and let it be.

He fell asleep that night while watching Charlie Chaplin’s old silent films.