A Furry Friend

I had a chat with a squirrel today. He was sitting on the veranda and when I appeared he jumped off bur remained looking at me as he crouched on the path below. I began to speak and he pricked his ears up and then he sat up on his back legs, looking at me and even seemed interested in what I was saying.

I told him how handsome he looked and how attractive his coat was, gleaming in the sunlight. He responded to this by seeming to pull himself up and fluff out his coat. I received the distinct impression that he was used to people stopping to talk to him and he liked it. I felt as if he wanted to tell me about what fun it was to be a squirrel in this lovely, peaceful place where there were so many trees for him and his friends to play in. He seemed to be explaining within my head that he really enjoyed his life. He needed to keep an eye open for the eagles he said but apart from them, he didn’t think he had any enemies. Occasionally he would run about with the rabbits he said, or chase the groundhogs away just for the sheer fun of it. Life was good and he felt he was a very lucky squirrel, especially when humans like me stopped for a chat.

He said he was spending longer with me because I seemed to listen to what he was saying instead of just talking like so many others did. He was kept busy all summer and autumn storing nuts and acorns and things for when the winter was over and he would wake up from his hibernation so hungry and his store was the only place to find food. Then there was his dray. It took a long time to repair it each summer so that it would be proof against winter storms. Despite all this work he still found plenty of time to play and he was especially fond of teasing the young fawns as their mothers brought them to graze and play in the park. The young birds were great fun too, although he had to watch out because some of the mothers would fly at him and peck him with their sharp beaks. Once the chill winds of late autumn start to blow he told me he would climb up to his dray and fall asleep.

He told me he thought humans were strange. He couldn’t understand why we always seemed to be rushing around, coming and going and he felt this wasn’t something that made us happy and why did we do it? Why couldn’t we stay in the park all the time like he did? It is a beautiful place, there’s plenty to eat and because we are so big we wouldn’t even have to worry about the eagles. I tried to explain that we needed different food than he did and more of it because we were so big. He stopped to think about this and seemed to understand that we would need more food but no way could he understand all the rush. I had to agree that it was probably not necessary for us to rush about as much as we did and that we would probably benefit if we tried to be satisfied with what was around us, like he did.

I also tried to explain that because we were so big, we needed much larger shelters from the rain and wind that he did and we called them houses, but whilst he understood that we needed bigger places, he felt we didn’t need all the space that he saw when he ran in and out of some of the empty houses in the park. It made me think that perhaps he had a point. Do we use up too much land with our homes and need too many objects of all sorts with which to fill them? Could we not manage with less and if we did perhaps the earth would be in better shape. He thought that all those rooms were wasteful – “after all you can only be in one at a time,” he seemed to say, “And why shut yourself away in your houses when it’s so beautiful out here? You only come out first thing in the morning or when you are chasing off somewhere, or you’re cutting the grass, which I prefer to be long anyway.”

So this little squirrel has made me wonder about many things that we take for granted that perhaps we need to re-examine. Do we real ly need them or do we just want them to impress other people with how important or successful we are? I also fell to thinking that we could probably enjoy ourselves a lot more if we were more satisfied with what we had and took more time to appreciate the wonderful world surrounding us. It might take away much of the stress which is far too prevalent and without that we might be more considerate and understanding with one another. Thank you little squirrel and I hope we can chat again one morning.