Squirrelly

I have never quite understood what bird lovers hate about squirrels.  To me, one is as fascinating as the other, only in different ways.

The bird is brilliant, a beautiful singer and has the freedom to fly.  The squirrel is furry and fuzzy and cuddly looking.  They both draw me in and stir my thoughts.

But . . . they have fundamental differences beyond looks.

The bird is a creature of the moment.  It flies in, eats a bit here and there and flies off.

The squirrel is a hoarder.  It stuffs its little cheeks as full as it can, scampers off and returns until all the seed is gone.

I try to do a sort of reverse anthropomorphizing where I see some great lesson that can be translated into the human condition.  It falls short.

With all the similarities, people are still more complicated.  Our layers hide hundreds of thoughts and raison d'etre. We have more in common with paper mache dolls than these living breathing creatures.

Because in spite of the squirrels desire to hide away as much as possible, I don't believe he has any underlying reasons for what he does, except that it is instinct.  The same thing is true for the birds.  They eat what is in front of them and move off to find more when they need it, an instinctive thing for a creature whose food often has legs and wings and disappears the moment a shadow falls over it.

Our motives and excuses and general habits are much more complicated.  Even though we often say, "He is rotten to the core," or "She has a heart of gold," neither of those statements is a hard core truth.

People don't have cores as much as they have dreams and desires based on both truth and fantasy and it is often difficult to know where the boundaries of these things begin and end.