Squirrels are amazing. Yesterday, I threw a large number of nuts out on my deck for them. I don’t like squirrels, and I would not do this in temperate weather, but I’ve taken pity on them with all this snow.
In minutes, they’d organized an entire social, economic, and spiritual system around the manna. A production line of squirrels captured, gnawed, whittled, and then sped off with each pecan. At the bottom of the deck, squirrels with ribbons in their hair danced around a branch on which they’d drawn a crude image of a pecan. Directly against my sliding glass doors, a neat line of squirrels bowed and scraped in gestures of propitiation.
Today it’s flat-out war. Among themselves, as to which forms of propitiation are truly genuine and effective, and with other groups of squirrels, attracted to the bounty.
February 2nd, 2011 at 11:36PM
Partook of a warming libation prior to distributing our largesse to the rodents, did we?