Monday, February 7, 2011

Squirrels

My father is 70 years old and he has gone to war for the first time in his life; he has declared war on the squirrels in his backyard.  I realize that this is a condition that affects most men of retirement age who live places that have yards and birdfeeders.  It is an interesting fact to note that when we lived out in the County squirrels were not considered to be the marauders of the birdfeeder which they are now.  I don’t remember them being such a large topic of conversation. Of course back then they had a dog and there were pecan trees to feed the squirrels, armadillos, possums and whatever else crawled out of the cow pasture.  It started innocently enough with the squirrels jumping on the feeder and dumping out all the seed on the ground and then gorging themselves, they were a cute menace.  When they began chewing holes in the feeders so that the seeds would fall through and began getting drunk and rowdy on the hummingbird sugar it was too much.  He tried all sorts of things, bells, whistles, bribing the neighbor’s cat, and encouraging the 6’black snake to sun itself on the wall near the swing.  (My mother evicted the snake.)  As of late my father has gone high tech in his war.  He started out with just blowing the air horn at the squirrels, then he moved on to a pellet guns fitted with a laser sight, to paintball guns, to the collapsing birdfeeder and I think the next step is the electrification of the feeder and nearby tree with weight and motion detection. A bug zapper for squirrels.
My 3 year-old daughter, on the other hand, adores squirrels.  We actually hang corn blocks from the tree and she will stand on the stool at the backdoor and watch them.  She will call out, “Squirrel!” like the dogs in Pixar’s UP.  It’s cute and sweet to watch but  my father sees me as a traitor to the cause and as one who is indoctrinating my child to accept the enemy.  I try to explain that if I feed them on one side of the yard the bird feeder stays full a little longer.  He sees it as aiding and abetting the enemy. Riley doesn’t care; she just likes to watch the squirrels.
It is this desire to control one’s surroundings, to be sure of what is coming, to be able to prepare for whatever life brings us, is what is at the root of my father’s and many other peoples’ fear.   We are living in uncertain times. Our need for security, to be sure of who and what people are, what they stand for and the role of nature in our own lives is what drives us. It is the uncontrollable and unknowable change that we live with each day that we must come to terms with.   So do I give in to my father’s desire to control the natural world or just enjoy my daughter’s desire to watch the acrobatics of the squirrels on the corn block and, unfortunately, on the bird feeder? It is détente. I will tell my father that we like squirrels and hope that he will understand that nature cannot be controlled you can only get out of the way and enjoy the show.

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