Squirrelly Thoughts

 

With summer now gone and fall slowly taking over, the squirrels that visit our yard are becoming a bit more numerous and frantic. It's not that I blame them - the fault is entirely ours. For many years, as we fed the birds, we had at least one feeder that was an easy-access one for squirrels. We had not planned this, it's just that squirrels are nearly impossible to outfox outsquirrel. After a few visits by a wandering black bear in the last year or so, we've cut back on the bird feeders and rigged them so they are difficult for land critters to reach. This has frustrated the squirrels to no end and they have quit coming around so frequently, which is probably better or them in the long run. They are not really visitors; the Douglas squirrels, or chickarees, occupied this territory long before any of us were here and they favor native foods, especially seeds of the Douglas fir. Still, who doesn't enjoy an easy, free meal now and then? They continue to venture in to check the ground beneath the feeders. They need to store up some food for later, especially if it is a female who's expecting a second litter.

 

NPS Photo by Sally King

I've always enjoyed watching squirrels. I have no recollection of them being in the town I grew up in on the high plains of Montana, but we always saw them on any trip to the conifer-cloaked mountains. After we married and moved to the woods of Colorado, we enjoyed watching the Tassel-eared or Abert's squirrels which are found in ponderosa pine forests in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado plateau. The longer tufts of dark hair covering the tops of each ear make them stand out from other squirrels and definitely up the cuteness factor. They mainly feed off of the seeds, tender buds, and inner bark of the ponderosa pines there, but they also came to our feeders. 

We lived for a time in the hill country of Texas where there are Eastern Gray Squirrels. Active year-round, they live primarily in trees and feed on a great variety of foods; they regularly pilfered all the seed in our bird feeder. My husband kept trying to out-smart them and once mounted the feeder at the top of a tall, narrow pipe in the middle of the yard away from trees. One squirrel learned to climb the pole so I greased it with Vaseline. I still can picture him running up about half way, and then sliding back down like a miniature, furry fireman. After a number of failed attempts, he got even by blatantly grabbing and eating the ripe peaches on the tree next to our kitchen window. I do believe he smiled the whole time...

 

There is much we can learn from squirrels. They teach us to plan ahead, to store our energy for times of need, to help us get through the bad times and to prepare for the future. Prepare for seasonal changes; in periods of plenty save a little something. The squirrel's stash is no guarantee, however, because sometimes others rob the goods or they forget where they hid them. And squirrels sometimes go way overboard with their saving; reasonable saving and hoarding are not the same thing. For anyone who, like a squirrel, has been hoarding things - be prepared to release and let go.

 

Go to the ant, you sluggard;

consider its ways and be wise!

It has no commander,

no overseer or ruler,

yet it stores its provision in summer

and gathers its food at harvest.

Proverbs 6:6-8

Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." - Luke 12: 15

 

For Previous Posts on Squirrels,

click on the following:

Guilty By Association

Circus Admission: Sunflower Seeds

Entertaining Strangers
So Go Sow!

Fairy Tale

Fairy fluttered through my life briefly, on the fragile wings of youth, enthusiasm, optimism and vulnerability. Perhaps she does not even remember me, but the memory of her is deeply stamped on my heart, along with unanswered questions.

Images smile out at me (always smiling) from the pages of a scrapbook, now 37 years old. Five pictures - the only tangible evidence of her ever having been there. Other pictures, glued in my mind, divulge more, though not much, of the Fairy I once knew: a mysterious child with the dark, kinky hair, brown eyes and mocha-colored skin of mixed race; tall for her 9 years, long and lean with graceful fingers and an adorable pixie face. Teased for her unusual name, she was always clean, neat, quiet, shy, and almost painfully polite. Her grandmother insisted on it - she had her reasons.

One Fall an article in our rural Colorado paper citing a need for Girl Scout leaders caught my eye. I’d once been a Brownie and Girl Scout, but our troop folded in Jr. High due to a lack of leaders. With that memory still strong, how could I not respond?

Soon, I was deeply involved with a troop of 3rd and 4th grade Junior Girl Scouts. Fairy was in that troop and, as it turned out, was also our next door neighbor. Her grandfather, a quiet, kindly black man, worked in town. Her grandmother, Millie, was white, had some health problems and stayed home most of the time. She did not drive, so I brought Fairy home from the Scout meetings. They had moved west from Chicago, but kept to themselves and I never knew their backgrounds or how they came to raise Fairy. Their house was a ramshackle affair inside and out; they had seen better days and hoped to again. Millie once showed me her neatly packed away fine linens and china, shared her dream of a spacious new home they would build “someday”. Fairy adored her grandparents; she and Millie spent much time together and would sometimes wander over to visit. They’d pick wild Lambs’ quarter (which I considered weeds) from our garden to cook for their greens.

Once, I answered a frantic knocking at our door. There stood Fairy, barefoot, shivering and pale as a ghost. Her story spilled out - her dad was beating her grandmother; she’d hidden in her bedroom, climbed out the window and sprinted across the forest floor to the only safety she could think of close by. We locked the door, bundled her in a quilt, called the sheriff and fixed her cocoa. The 3 of us waited until we saw the sheriff’s car come and go and the phone rang. Millie, knowing where Fairy would go, said she was OK and Fairy could come home. I drove her back, learned that her father did live in the area, would sometimes get drunk and become violent. Millie seemed to accept it as a fact of life; Fairy was terrified.

Soon afterward we moved out of state. Back to visit once, I stopped in to see them. They were not much for writing, so eventually we lost contact. A few years later, in a Christmas letter from another former Colorado neighbor, we learned that Fairy’s grandfather had been killed. His car had slid on ice through a stop sign at the bottom of the road, careened into the trees, and wedged in a gully hidden by brush and snow. It wasn’t until the spring thaw that they found his body...

When I read that, I cried bitterly, and my heart went out to Fairy - and to all the children like her who live with intolerance, poverty, violence and grief. I wonder how she and Millie fared, what kind of a woman she grew into, if she found happiness and security? Is she still smiling? Did my having known her for two short years make any difference in her life?

I do know that she affected mine. Every year around this time, memories of her come flooding back. Fairy, you are in my thoughts...

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
       is God in his holy dwelling.
God sets the lonely in families,
      he leads forth the prisoners with singing;
      but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.

Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; 
      protect me from men of violence
      who plan to trip my feet.

Psalm 68:5 - 6 and 141:4

Rising to the Occasion

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain...

A wonderful, rich aroma wafts through the kitchen as my automatic bread machine bakes a batch of “homemade” bread. It’s so easy these days that I wonder why I don’t do it more often, but many things compete for my time and attention.

The evening news spews the latest political rhetoric from the current candidates. I try to pay attention, and I am interested, but it seems they all spend their precious time, and ours, telling us what they think we want to hear and berating their opponents. I want to believe what they say, but actions speak louder and we won’t know what they will really do until the election is over.

I grew up surrounded by wheat country, but never knew much about wheat. In elementary school we took a tour of a local flour mill, so learned what happened to those truckloads of wheat hauled in to, and the box cars of flour hauled out of, my home town. After that, I did view bread on the grocery store shelves a bit differently.

As an adult, I taught myself to make bread because I wanted to learn how and find out if it really did taste better than the store-bought kind. I enjoyed mixing the ingredients together, kneading the dough, and watching the yeast do its work in making the dough rise. There were times of trial and error and more than once, failure. The bread machine makes the job easier, but old yeast does not work well whatever the method.

Old rhetoric does not work well either, although the politicians do not seem to notice. It is obvious that they want to stir us up, get us to cast our ballots for them as they set out to save us from ourselves. Passions will build and rise up to Election Day and then what? Will the great American loaf fall or rise further toward the perfect ideal we want so much to believe in? Politics, economics, societies - none are perfect and none change quickly.

Pikes Peak, Colorado - by David Shankbone

Katharine Lee Bates did not perfect her lyrics to America the Beautiful immediately, either. An English literature instructor at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, she made a lecture trip to Colorado in 1893. While there, she journeyed to the top of Pikes Peak. Because of the altitude her stay at the top was brief, but she viewed the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away under ample skies and the opening lines floated into her mind. The resulting poem first appeared in print in 1895, but she revised the lyrics in 1904 and again in 1913. For two years after it was written it was sung to just about any popular or folk tune that would fit with the lyrics, with “Auld Lang Syne” being the most notable of those. Not until 1910 were the words published together with the tune “Materna”, which was composed in 1882, nearly ten years before she wrote the words. Even after that, the tune to be used was challenged to some degree. In 1926 a contest was held to put the poem to new music, but no other entry was determined to be more acceptable. And so the issue was decided, but Katharine never did indicate publicly which music she liked best.

The bread machine beeps, and I remove a tall, lovely brown loaf of fragrant bread. The yeast was good and did its job - now let’s see how the politicians do. Hopefully, they’ll rise to the occasion.

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea.

...”What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Luke 13:20 - 21

Pikes Peak picture file from Wikimedia Commons

Snoopy Running Free

Miki and Snoopy - Colorado 1969

I called and called, clapping my hands loudly, trying to quell my rising fear and anger - fear that Miki would be lost forever; anger that Snoopy had, once more, led him astray.

Miki and Snoopy - penned up

Snoopy was a medium-sized dog of dubious lineage. With gray and black short hair and built like a small tank, he arrived on the doorstep of our rural Colorado home not long after we’d moved in. He quickly made himself at home and became fast friends with Miki, our 7 month old Sheltie.

A pet of our home’s previous owners, who moved out of state and could or would not take him, he had been given to friends who lived several miles away. The problem was, Snoopy only knew one home - and it was now ours. His new owners guessed where he was and retrieved him, but over the course of months, Snoopy returned “home” time after time. Finally, his new owners said he was ours.

We did not want him, but decided to keep him until we could find him a new home. He was a friendly dog, with a happy-go-lucky personality. We soon discovered, however, that Snoopy had some less-than-desirable traits. He was filthy and smelled bad, but turned nasty at any effort to bathe him. He was extremely stubborn, blatantly not housebroken, refused all training. Although he lived at our house, ate and slept there, I suspect he had never really been “owned” by anyone - any effort to contain him failed. When he escaped and roamed the hills, Miki went with him.

Backyard laundry

So here they both came, happily loping through the pines - dragging pieces of someone’s damp laundry behind them. Horrified, I scolded them both soundly and put them back in their pen, pondering what to do next. Obviously someone was missing laundry, but I had no idea who or where they lived. Perhaps they did not yet even know it was missing, so I could easily ignore the theft - plead ignorance and never be found out. But somehow, that just didn’t feel right.

Swallowing my anger - and pride - I strolled through the woods in the direction from which the dogs had come. Before long, a tidy little home appeared among the trees; fresh laundry hung on a clothesline in the yard. Hesitantly tapping on the door, I blurted out the tale of the wayward dogs to the woman who answered. Rosemary invited me in, offered refreshment, and became my first neighborhood friend there.

Snoopy - always led the pack

She and her family proved to be good neighbors during the four years we lived there. They watched our house, collected our mail and paper when we were gone; their teenage boys cared for Miki and the next puppy we got. She and her husband were older than we were, but we exchanged dinners several times, helped each other through the Colorado snowstorms. We’ve kept in touch, still exchanging Christmas cards and letters these many years later.

And Snoopy? Neither of us can remember exactly what became of him. My husband thinks we found him a new owner; I picture him running away one last time, alone. But I will never forget him, and the wonderful neighbors his errant ways led me to.

Snoopy running free

I truly hope that he’s still wandering free - wherever free-spirited dogs go...

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. “In your anger do not sin”. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.
Ephesians 4: 25-27

Night Owl Thoughts

I have always been a night owl. As a child, there were many times when I did not want to go to bed. I enjoyed hearing the quiet evening drone of adult conversations and stories, even as my eyelids drooped and my head nodded. There was no TV or computer to compete with and even long telephone conversations were rare, so evening entertainment was live and on the spot. Being an active child, with an equally active imagination, my sleep was filled with dreams, some of which were scary. To avoid those, I learned to put off going to sleep as long as I could. Night can be a frightening time for a child.

In college, studying was easier for me late at night, away from the noise and activity that comes with living with a lot of other people. During weekends and holidays, late evenings were spent with friends. At that time girls had a curfew, so when my husband and I were dating he’d bring me home on time, then we’d resume our date on the phone - often into the wee hours of the morning. During the summers my family gathered at the cabin on the lake and we spent evenings visiting and catching up on each others’ lives. If the night was calm and clear, we’d gather on the beach around a fire, or huddle under old quilts on the porch. Nothing compares to a crystal-clear nighttime sky where there are no city lights to dim the brilliant stars and moon.

Adulthood brought other realities. Married less than a year, I spent sleepless nights alone while my husband was clear across the country getting basic training with the Air Force reserves. In the dark I paced the floor of our small home in rural Colorado until flashes of lightning and booming thunder subsided, fearing the fires they might bring. With a child there were late-night trips to an on-call doctor for severe ear infections and waiting up for an errant or runaway teen. Aging parents with their own worries, fears and illnesses led to more sleepless nights. In the quiet and dark, with none of the usual daytime distractions, thoughts and emotions have free rein.

But there is another, less worrisome, side to the night where quiet and darkness become your friend. Concentration and creativity can be sharpened, as can problem-solving and laying of plans. The night is so alive if we only pay attention and be patient. Bats flutter about at dusk, snatching insects in midair. Fish rise to the surface to feed. Mice, voles, shrews, opossums, and raccoons scurry about in search of food, some of which they find beneath our bird feeders. On rare occasions we’ve seen an elusive western flying squirrel perched in one, happily nibbling away. Our streets become animal freeways at night. Lying awake, I’ve heard the distinctive yips and howls of coyotes and the eerie hooting of an owl. We rarely see the deer, but know they steal in to munch on rose, mountain ash and cherry leaves.

Gazing up at Orion, Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper, and other constellations as they slowly rotate about Polaris, we are awed with the magnitude of the night sky in all its glory. Paddling a small boat on a silent lake while a brilliant full moon rises, humbles us and brings us closer to God - for we are never alone in the night.

I rise before dawn and cry for help;
      I have put my hope in your word.
My eyes stay open through the watches of the night,
      that I may meditate on your promises.
Hear my voice in accordance with your love;
      preserve my life, O Lord, according to your laws.
            Isaiah 119: 147 - 149