Nature and Ignorance

July 29, 2018

Yesterday I saw a story unfold that really affected me.  As I was walking from the chapel to the dining hall I saw something on the sidewalk, as I got closer I saw that it was two baby squirrels.  At first I thought that they were hurt, possibly from falling from a tree.  But as I got closer I saw that they were snuggling and playing, even wrestling with each other!  I stood and watched in wonder for quite a few minutes.  Then I took a few steps closer and made a noise and they stopped and focused on me, and immediately they came hopping my direction.  They climbed on my shoes and hugged my ankles, they were adorable.  I have never encountered wildlife that was so trusting, affectionate and confident.  I thought, and maybe said out loud, “you guys trust people, maybe that’s not such a good idea?” I looked around for a watchful parent, but didn’t see one.  Then I remembered that about 2 days before, I was called to remove a dead squirrel from the craft area, I wonder if it was their mother?  This was in close proximity to the swimming pool, and close to where I encountered the baby squirrels.  About 10 days previous to that the staff was having trouble stabilizing the swimming pool chemistry, they had to ‘shock’ the water to kill off algae and get the water to clear up.  I had seen squirrels drinking from the pool almost every day, and I wondered if that may have caused the death of that one I picked up.  Maybe it was the nursing mother to the two babies that I encountered today. 

People came around and looked in wonder at the cute little guys.  Someone looked up how to care for them and it looked like that would be a 24 hour a day job for someone.  There was also a recommendation to put them back out in the wild and hope that a mother would appear and feed them, so we did.  But, some unsupervised children found them and handled them, and later they were throwing them in the air, maybe hoping that they would cling to a tree?  I couldn’t imagine what they were thinking.

I found these two little creatures this morning, both of them were dead.  It is hard to get out of my head, the tragic absence of their mother, their disastrous trust of people, and their final hours of being handled harshly by unsupervised and un-taught children.