As the snow fell and fell and fell – on April 12th no less – I was disconsolately watching the antics of a red squirrel helping himself to the seeds and nuts in the birdfeeders on the deck. It made for quite a pleasant diversion from all the bullshit spewing from our political leaders these days. It really is true that politics is a “game” – a blood sport – generally played by white men with big egos and small … well, you get the point.
So it was a pleasant interlude as I watched this small red creature dart in and around the feeders and in and out of the snow, always at breakneck speed. That got me thinking that I’ve never seen a squirrel walk. Sure, you’ll sometimes see them taking a kind of half step or so before they blast off down the path, but that’s more like the half step a basketball player will take to avoid a travelling call, jockeying for position before making a final decision whether to run or not, and to where. Of course the squirrel doesn’t usually have a ball, but the motion strikes me as very similar – a brief pause before continued frenetic action.
Perhaps they can’t walk at all, which must be really upsetting to mama squirrel if all the kids do is race around the house, or tree stump, or wherever they live, all day. What if junior comes racing around the corner and shoots out of a knot hole and blows the family’s entire years worth of stashed acorns all over the living room floor, or worse, out into a snowbank? Mama wouldn’t even be able to give him a whack upside the head for not running in the house, ‘cause he can’t not run. It would be like Stephen Harper curbing his vindictive mean streak.
Nope, some creatures are just born that way, and nothing or no one is going to change them.
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