Friday, September 24, 2004

On Squirrel Wheels



I have a wheelbarrow upended against the back garden fence. Its wooden handles point straight up. The wheelbarrow is there because I'm lazy, but today I found other rewards for that negligence: A squirrel was busily gnawing away at the wheelbarrow handles. When it managed to dislodge a piece, it ran up the fence, jumped into a tall tree on the other side and disappeared high up into its canopy. After a few minutes it came back and repeated this odd exercize.

What was the squirrel doing? Rebuilding the nest with really high-quality wood? Trying to make sure that I get splinters next time I invade its realm? Or was it addicted to the varnish on the handles?

I love this world. I love the squirrels doing inexplicable things, the trees that give the squirrels a harbor and the stones on the ground next to the wheelbarrow. I love the mountains and the oceans and the ponds and the frogs in the ponds and even the little insects that jump up and down on the surface of the water. I even love human beings and many of the inexplicable things they do.

That is why I keep writing, in my pretty ineffective way, on those of the things that humans do which are neither inexplicable nor good. Because some of them will hurt the squirrel and the tree and the stones and so on, all the way down the line to then return a full circle to human beings.