The Life of Squirrels

You've seen a squirrel at some point in your life, of course you have. Whether it be a hulking grey squirrel, a vindictive black squirrel, a voracious red squirrel or even a sentinal ground squirrel. You've proably seen one of each come to think of it, but which insane beast implanted itself most in your secluded mind? The red squirrel naturally.
It's not like you can avoid the little buggers. You go for a hike and there's a new one every forty feet yelling at you. Nervy little shits, like you're really bothering them when they're way the hell up a tree. Most people just write them off as nuisances and you usually do too until one day you pause to take a closer look.
Whlie not the most fascinating of creatures, red squirrels can still be interesting at least, and highly entertaining at most. You gradually become emmersed in their lives and soon find yourself a witness to their nascar races, royal rubles, air shows and evening serenades. It almost seems like they have some warped desire to be a bird, attempting to fly from tree to tree, chirping away trying to sing a song. They almost sound like a broken kazoo to you.
You've even realised that, the attention mongerers they are, you can ply them with treats. After a series of trials you discover, not that they need it or anything, but red squirrels have enormous sweet teeth. Like any rodent they're always growing. They aren't terribly picky about what form of sugar you give them although they do seem to be more partial to sugar cubes and chocolate chips. Of course, any form of sugar buzz only makes them more brazen. Soon the branches are lurching in the nonexistant wind, binding and creaking with the weight of crazed squirrels leaping from one bough to another. What could they do to top this? Wait until harvest time!
Maybe you've noticed mushrooms sitting up on the trees, not all that odd, many trees grow some form of fungus or other after all. However upon closer look you see that these lil'shroom's stems are pointing sky high. Fungi are weird and all, but they don't tend to grow stem up so how did these ground dwelling moulds get up on those branches? Squirrels of course. They may not seem like the smartest of critters but even they know that a dried mushroom lasts longer than the wet ones. You think this may be the extent of a red squirrels eccentrities, after all, how many quirks can a featherweight rodent have? Still, you've yet to have their full force drilled into your head.
On one walk you're unfortunate enough to pass under a squirrels launch pad. Some time back they decided that to climb up and down a seventy foot tree carrying a pine cone each time would simply take too long. Remedy number one: Toss down the pine cones and collect them on the ground. Squirrels, like any teenage boy who's just watched Saving Private Ryan or any other war movie, feel the need to add sound effects to any of their actions and dropping pine cones are no exceptions. They just about have the bombing whistle down to an art. Frantically scrambling to and fro grabbing as many cones in their mouth and flinging them out into the air as quickly as possibly, all enhanced by rapid warning chirps to look out below. Alas, these chirps don't always help since the tree's themselves jump in for a little bit of sport. Batting pine cones out of the air, redirecting them towards your head. You fear the squirrels have tag teamed with Old Man Spruce and now form a deadly duet with one goal, a migraine for you. It must be quite entertaining actually, to perch atop a giant tree and pelt unsuspecting usurpers of your territory with frost laden seed capsules.
After all your spectating of the red squirrels and their trivial quarrels, quirky harvesting methods and agitated vocalizations you decide it's better off to just let rodents alone. There must be a reason people go nuts or are called squirrely, perhaps this could be why....

Precipitation

My entire life consists of me trying to separate from the masses. Some drops are content to be part of the flood but I'm not one of them. The most exhilarating moment for me is right after my rebirth; the freefall.
Raindrops in general are a collective breed, like the quicksilver some of us are exposed to we prefer to cling together. I don't mind being part of a smaller puddle, especially since that can mean a quicker rebirth, but the lakes, rivers and oceans just aren't for me. Especially the oceans, pleh, salt!
Many consider the existence of a raindrop to be repetitive and dull and for some they may be. But I know the secret to stave off this dullness. I have a goal that helps combat the mundane. I seek separation! This in itself could be boring if it weren't for the fact that separation is extremely hard for a drop to achieve. Think of all the trillians of similar drops all grasping you, refusing to let you escape their clutches. Then reflect on the drops that have the same goal as me, jostling to get to the edge. No thought about how many other goals they're ruining in their charge.
I escaped once, many rebirths ago. During my freefall I had the hideous misfortune to land in a stream. The other drops quickly swallowed me and I was swept along as a victim of gravity. Being brushed along rocks was certainly disastorous enough but then I found that things can get worse. A hulking mountain river appeared and the collective gargle of hapy drops transformed into an ecstatic roar of the mob. I found myself trapped in the backflow where stream meets river and then violently sucked into the essence of the flow. This must be what armageddon will feel like. Now not only was I smashing into boulders I was glancing off of fish and weeds. I was entirely at the mercy of the rush, to centred to even dream of being tossed free by over exuberant drops. I was becoming despondent.
I've never seen a bear during any of my falls nor experienced them while in puddle form. I must say though, they really do like fish! One moment I was pinned against a boiling red scale, the next I was free from oppression. I found myself on a rough black surface with quite a view of my roaring breed. I found my platform to not only be rouch and black, but large and cersatile and in possesion of two concave impressoins. Most other species would describe a nose as black and wet and considering, as a drop, my environments are regularily wet, I wasn't far off in my description of such a beasts olefactory centre. There I was perched on a bear's nose and exposed to the world at large. It was wonderful! It was perfect! It ended all too soon with a minute tilt of the head and a mad slide towards the river but I found I didn't mind. I had more than enough joyful material to relive until the rebirth once again claimed me.

Butterfly Feathers

Does it hurt when a butterfly loses the feathers off its wings? I always wondered this while I was saving the poor creatures from their shimmering graves of Davey Jones' Lockers, backyard style. While moths are suicidal when it comes to flames, butterflies seem to be the extreme opposite, instead prefering stagnate pails of water. Perhaps they get the ideas from the flowers. I always told my mother that flowers set bad examples.
Somehow the tulips and marigolds of our garden never seemed overly encouraging. They brought to mind the more pessimistic versions found in Alice's Wonderland than any sunshiney version you'd see in an elementary play. I told mother this one day after perusing a small colony of yellow flowers.
Logically yellow flowers should be the most sunshiney, I told her, but these flowers were just a carpet of weaklings. To me they should be called Pansy's instead of whatever their name is. In any event, they're inspirational enough plants if you happen on them in the morning or evening, but at midday they aren't half so supporting. Petals all pinched together, cringing away from the sun, not the least bit cheery. And their form if they don't get their way!
In their aversion of sun they're constantly swaying in hopes of rain. If this liquid precipitation doesn't come what may you expect of such fickle flora? Why, they sulk of course. First they'll droop their leaves then their squinting blossoms ntil they even begin to look bruised. Bruised from lack of rain! How absurd.
None of this depressoin seems to deter the bees, however I'm puzzled as to why they put up with the flowers' bad hygiene. Even I clean better than those flowers! I told mother. As soon as the bees put their dainty little feet in the flowers they become emmersed in the most dreadfrul yellow, sticky stuff. They then carry this dust around the neighbourhood while all the other flowers ignore the spreading mass. They, of course, being too caught up in their tragic, rainless existance. Eventually they give up all together and just dry to a crisp. Hardly motivational plants just up and dying simply because they don't get their own way. I told mother as much too, the look she gave me didn't make it seem as though she agreed though.
Still, after thinking about such flowers it doesn't surprise me any longer that butterflies would rather face water instead of flowers. That and it's rather a large slap in the face by the miniature kites. A last taunt of "I can get water to quench my thirst.", something that the flowers have wanted all along.

And We're Off!

Well I came upon the greatest summer job possible - or at least one of them - and it put me right smack dab in the middle of the Rockies with nothing but Nature around me. Since I'm now living in a tent in this loving atmosphere I've been included in many of the animals escapades, been wrapped up in tonnes of Natures moods and just relaxed in general among the creatures of the forest.

This paired with the free time I have has led to me writing casual, flighty anecdotes about views of Nature and her inhabitants. It has also brought to my attention many different relationships. Any and all can be found right here, after I post them of course. If some of the writing seems jumpy, odd and just plain weird, you can put it down to me being bushwacked, sometimes I go days without really seeing any people, that post could have been written on one of those days.

While out communining with Nature I have furthered my research regarding Paganism and started following it for it's spirituality and respect for Nature. I may also include little activities that pertain to Paganism and whichever tradition I'm focusing on at that point in time. I am trying to learn about all the traditions that I can at the moment.

So to sum it up, what might you find on this blog? Well you can find the latest trials and tribulations I've faced with the squirrels, you can find fanciful fiction that's popped into my head at some point, you can follow parts of my struggle to find my place among Nature's world by supporting her via Paganism. You can probably even find allusions to herbalism since I'm starting to dip my toes into that as well. Guess you'll just have to stick around and read to find out for sure :)