A Squirrel Story

I found a pretty decent parking space this morning. In spite of the fact I was late. It wasn’t too far to walk in the rain, but not so close I felt like I was being lazy… although I told myself I will be hauling vegetables this afternoon, so lazier is an option.

Then, as I started to pull closer to the spot and make my haphazard attempt at street parking (a skill I can’t even master with a backup camera), I saw two squirrels right by the curb. One was dead. The other squirrel… well, I honestly couldn’t tell if it was trying to revive the dead one, or trying to scavenge something off the body. I hesitated about parking my car. I didn’t want to squish either one of them. The alive squirrel saw my car and scooted away for a bit. When I didn’t move closer to the curb, it went back and started to wrestle with the dead body again.

I don’t know what the mating habits of squirrels are. I know they fight with one another something fierce. They used to nest in the walls of my Oxford Street dorm at Lesley and scream at each other in the middle of the night. As a general rule, I hate the stupid rats with fluffy tails. They are dirty and disgusting and have no shame when it comes to screen windows in my kitchens. I think they are vile animals and I really wish that Noah had left them off the ark.

But something about that squirrel stays with me ninety minutes later. Enough to write this down. It was sad. Because, as much as I would like to think the squirrel was just trying to get its indebted lot of acorns off the dead body, I’m suspecting that the squirrel had lost a mate. And even with its stupid little pea brain, it was experiencing the loss of another life.

I really do think nature speaks to us sometimes. Even through icky squirrels.