A little bit squirrely.

Carl & Ray at the Feeder, 2018

The Apple Incident, 2018

 

Squirrels don’t live in Australia. Seriously. There aren’t any there. I speculate it goes back to ancient history. Every 25 years, there is a HUGE Animal Compendium. Of course, they don’t let us dumb humans know about it. We’d certainly find a way to spoil it.

Anyway, this particular compendium took place somewhere in the double-digit-BCs. Maybe 50 BC or so. And there, a massive argument broke out between the Wombats and the Gray Squirrels. (I heard one of the Wombats said, “Yo mama’s so old, she forgot her purse on Noah’s ark.”). Well. Of course. THAT was just ridiculous. Squirrels don’t carry purses. It was a heck of a thing. The fur was a-flying. At any rate, the Grand Master of the Compendium, a Polar Bear from the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, ruled that the Wombats had to stay exclusively in Australia. And, of course, ALL squirrels were never to visit the Down Under. Ordinance 7231, if you must know. So yes. It stuck. No squirrels in Australia.

They do, however, live all over the rest of the world. In all different shapes and sizes. All sizes. From the African Pygmy Squirrel, at 5 inches. All the way to the Indian Giant Squirrel, which clocks in at three feet long. I’m not going to India any time soon, for that reason alone. A 3-foot squirrel.

But there it is.

I never knew that squirrels have general categories either. I guess it is sort of like belonging to a Lodge. Maybe. There are 1. Ground Squirrels. 2. Tree Squirrels. And 3. Flying Squirrels. The latter aren’t like boarding planes or anything, nor do they have feathery wings. Truthfully, they are just wicked-bad leapers with hang-glider flaps under their little armpits. The application of deodorant is a problem.

Anyway. I imagine the groups get together for big meetings every year or so, just to sort things out. Year-end reports and all. Grand Poobahs. Ground rules for the newcomers. It is a big to-do. Open Nut Bar. General Tom Foolery.

But, the whole “gathering of nuts” is their way of life. Well, there’s the mating and reproducing, those frisky little squirrels. But aside from that, it is all about the NUT. We all know how it goes. They rummage around, find nuts, hide nuts. Rummage more, find more nuts, hide more nuts. They are a tiny bit obsessed if you ask me.

But it is a hard gig. They work very energetically, and earnestly, in gathering the nuts. They bury them in places unknown to the rest of the world. Secret hiding rituals, known only to the in singular squirrel. They are diligent, and dedicated in their mission.

Yet. However, noble as that may sound, they are also little crooks. Squirrels lose 25% of their buried food to thieves — robbers from their own species.

They bury, with the intention of hiding the nut for safety. And then, they turn around. Always on the prowl, looking for the next heist.

Of course, there is the other thing. Sometimes they forget. A squirrel tends to lose track of all those nutty treasures. A lot of buried-squirrel-nuts grow up to be trees one day.

Squirrels are smart and adaptive too. I know, I know. There is that crazy thing they do with cars. Well, I just found out that they zig-zag to get away from predators. I speculate, that they see our big, roaring, polluting cars as predators. Hence, the zig. And the zag. Sometimes resulting in death. Another abhorrent thing we dumb humans do.

So. Yes. The way of the squirrel.
Which we certainly can learn from.

The world around us is completely filled with nuts.
All we can do, is try our best, to keep track of our own.

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“One person’s craziness is another person’s reality.”
― Tim Burton

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“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
― Herman Melville

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“Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get”
― W.P. Kinsella

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This is just nuts.