Weathering Phil's prediction

Now is the winter of our discontent.

Or at least of our discord.

The extended frigid season doesn’t stand a shadow of a chance of lasting too long, according to predictions delivered today in Punxsutawney, Pa.

Phil, the nation’s official groundhog has spoken – if not in the traditional verbal sense, at least through his body language. Neither he nor urban cousin Staten Island Chuck glimpsed the outline of their sleepy, corpulent forms lurking in the shadows beneath the glare of national publicity.

On Long Island, however, Malverne Mel and Holtsville Hal beg to differ – and trust me, groundhogs don’t take an especially sanguine approach to begging. Thrust from their cozy, frostbound snoozes into the spotlight of our selfish curiousity, the suburban pair saw no climate change, at least not for at least six more weeks.

Groundhogs don’t have their acts together this year, and that’s a bit disconcerting. Lack of such species consensus can readily lead into more dangerous territory: Imagine soon a split among their ranks, for instance, into Republicans and Democrats. (We already know those parties don’t see eye-to-eye on anything, especially climate change.) From there it could lead to a religious uprising, with fundamentalist and New Age groundhogs debating the merits of prognostication, hibernation and even eternal damnation.

So let’s hope for an intervention – and fast. Some kind of mediator should be able to help the groundhogs get their acts together again.

Frankly, the alternative leaves us cold.

Saving lives, then taking dozens more

Some public acts turn the head, others the stomach. This is a case of the latter:

The Holley Fire Department, of upstate N.Y., is a bastion of life-saving volunteerism, comprised - according to its website - of a community of volunteers that has at their disposal two pumpers, a ladder truck, a grass fire/utility truck and other vehicles designed to preserve the sanctity of lives in peril. These are rescuers who on a moment's notice dispatch emergency medical services to care for their fellow residents whose lives and property are at risk - and, following moments of horror, sacrifice and personal sadness, also honor the fallen brethen who died honorably among them.

There is no question that putting one's life on the line, especially when rumuneration is little more than a thank you, is no mere trifle. Not everyone is capable of being moved by the volunteer spirit. It speaks to only a select few.

The same can be said about the killing spirit, particularly when the killing is done in cold blood - mass killings at movie theaters, shopping malls and too many schools have borne this truth recently. There are those who say such sort of hard-edged slaughter has to be nurtured, starting in childhood. Indeed, this very theory is central - even now - to our nation's hot-button debate on gun control, a dialectic being echoed here in New York State's Capitol building too.

So this leads to the question of why such a life-embracing team of courageous, unpaid souls would dispatch small children into the woods with loaded weapons to compete in something called "The Seventh Annual Squirrel Slam." Yes, this means six such contests have already preceded this one, leaving bags of kids' prized grey and red squirrel carcasses in their annual bloody wake.

What is the price of one life, anyway?

Inquire of the Holley Fire Department membership and by virtue of these volunteers' selfless deeds in safeguarding the human community, they will affirm that life is undoubtedly without price. It is worth saving at all costs and personal risk. Ask any firefighter's widow who lost half of her heart in a smoky blaze. Ask children whose father was overcome in the embrace of a building that collapsed around him.

But ask that question again on Sat., Feb. 16, and fire officials will tell you the price of one life: It is $50 cold cash. That's the top prize for the single fattest dead squirrel bagged by any child's gunshot. (And no cheating, folks: As the website advises "No internal packing or soaking of squirrels for added weight." You obviously cannot make one of these lives worth more than it is really worth.)

For a team effort, netting five dead squirrels, the reward is greater: The children get $200 to share among themselves. And in the spirit of progress, the good people of Holley's fire department have added a new category, making kids 14 and younger eligible to join in the slaughter. These prepubescent soldiers of fortune also qualify now to bring their dead fatties in for $50. Hey it sure beats waiting for that weekly allowance.

So Annie, get your gun. Better yet, get your tickets. They're $10 apiece from the volunteer rescuers of Holley and that price includes refreshments after the slaughtered animals have all been weighed. A mere $10. You can't even get a good movie ticket for that price.

Still, with $50 or more in hand, the victors can probably afford to go to the movies now and even treat their friends. Perhaps they'll take in a special screening of "The Hunger Games," watching teens just a few years older than themselves in that violent, dystopian Hollywood drama taking aim with their bows, arrows and guns. But this time, it will be on one another.

No presidential conspiracy

Looks like the squirrels owe President Barack Obama an apology - and rightfully so. Although there was no conspiracy to upstage him, Monday, Jan. 21 - Presidential Inauguration Day and Martin Luther King Day - just happens to fall on Squirrel Appreciation Day. As conflicting major holidays go, this is turning out to be a real contest for the hearts and minds of the American people.

Granted, the president gets a parade - but how does one day's pomp and procession possibly compare to the grand promenades queueing down daily from the trees in our parks and outside our homes?

As for the Oath of Office? Think about this, folks: Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution - which establishes that oath - isn't necessary for squirrels. Do they really need a formal, public and pre-scripted affirmation of their mission?

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully crack all the nuts I can find in these United States, and will to the best of my constitution, bury, cache and defend them."

As for inaugural banquets, visit any outdoor venue with more than a half-dozen pecan or filbert trees and you've got a gourmet gorgefest right there. Washington's ceremonial 3,000-calorie binge on clam chowder, bison and wild huckleberry reduction holds no appeal to the squirrels.

However, we do understand: Squirrel Appreciation Day is a solemn occasion, so it's no wonder the president wants in on some of the action. The squirrels are willing to share some of their 24-hour period and let the light shine on someone else for a bit.

No doubt, however, one of the best-kept secrets in Washington is sure to get out by the time the ceremony gets going. In the color of his suit, the most observant among us will surely discern the truth: If it is a subtle shade of grey - as is likely - we know President Obama is really using the occasion of his return to the White House to express his inner squirrel.

And on Jan. 21, of all days, the squirrels are certain to appreciate that.

Your best investment yet

On Jan. 27, U.S. postal rates are poised for another increase. A Congressional deal to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff" has hiked payroll taxes for workers. Gasoline isn't getting any cheaper. (The air, at least is still free).

But there is one cost-effective entity we can always count on, year after year: The squirrels.

Thanks to something called the Rodent Multiplier Effect, a little-known mathematical marvel, squirrels make it easy to maximize many of your investments with a minimum of effort: How else could you expend one walnut and get back 10 squirrels? (Note: This is only a theoretical model, actual results may vary.)

And with what other investment could you establish one simple wooden nestbox in a tree and, in no sooner than a week, discover you have attracted at least a half dozen occupants? The Rodent Multiplier Effect is not only foolproof, it is often swift beyond measure.

The most dramatic, if not chaotic form of investment, is to hang a birdfeeder: The almost immediate return comes as an ample supply of squirrels -- admittedly they are often the unintended result of such an avian-friendly gesture, but nonetheless they do comprise an excellent return on your investment. Stocks and bonds, money market funds and precious metals seem, by contrast, as flighty, mercurial and unstable as a member of the U.S. Congress.

It's sad that financial planners never advise their clients to consider a Grey Market investment. Still, in boom and bust economies, the squirrels are a constant - better than an annuity, and with minimum maintenance fees attached. Never mind if the Dow is up or down, squirrels are steadfast, hanging on your screens, looking in your back window, waiting on your front porch. You can count on it.

In these changing economic times, this is a comfort. Squirrels' characteristically high interest rates are unrestricted by law. And it's a certainty that their activity will climb: for them, the only way is up.

As we teeter between regression, recession and depression, we can find some peace in knowing that scratching sound we hear isn't coming from a wolf at the door -- just a 2-pound financial adviser who's eager to get down to business, squirreling things away for the long winter ahead.

A Congress of squirrels

The 113th Congress of Squirrels has gathered today to renew their oath of office - and with it, no doubt, the partisan squabbling over whose district is in line to get the best nuts in the forest.

We're not talking here about political pork. Squirrels are notoriously vegetarian, for the most part. So the squawking will likely center, as it often does, on who gets the pick of the fattest acorns and - at this time of the year - who gets to breed with the fluffiest of the forest femmes.

Within the dominant party, the Squeaker of the House must be reaffirmed too. Squirrels, rugged individualists that they are, are simply more effective with this kind of leadership.

Then there is the smaller but just-as-important matter of selecting the Minority Chip. Ground squirrels (even the tiniest of the tiny chipmunks) need to get in on the political action too because most of our nation's meaningful legislation begins at the ground, if not the grassroots, level. Bringing it back to the burrow is sometimes the best way to get things done.The only challenge, one supposes, will be keeping this particular representative from nodding off during session and going into full-tilt hibernation - not unlike some humans, glazed over by the endless partisan bickering.

When it comes to threat of filibuster, though, these gnawmakers' preferences are more likely to turn instead to filberts as a means of cracking the national debt. Their job is to cache enough of them away, ensuring a multi-trillion dollar national deficit could never blight their landscape, at least not on their watch.

Yes, perhaps some resources will be diverted elsewhere: They will consider sending aid to the embattled red squirrels in the United Kingdom to help them contain the fevered spread of pox that has killed so many of their Eurasian cousins. Or maybe ship some assistance to India to ensure the continued protection of the striped squirrels there.

Back home, there is the continued and urgent vigilance to secure the future of our nation's pride - the prairie dog - and this effort too must be given the funding to succeed.

Fear not, it will get done by this tiniest of Congress - at least in our dreams. Because while squirrels don't find necessarily get their thrill from Capitol Hill (and who does?), all that squawking and tail-flicking doesn't go on forever.

Eventually the squirrels get down to business for the greater good of the species.

If only such radical ideas were humanly possible too.

And now, the weather pawcast

A post-Christmas storm closed in on parts of the U.S. this week as meterologists nervously assessed the patterns for various regions of the nation. But their most sophisticated tools, however well-calibrated they may have been, were clearly outpaced by some of the smallest, oldest - and yes, greyest - storm survivors known to the planet.

Forget barometric pressure: Nut-o-metric Pressure is where it's at.

True forecasting at this time of year comes from divining the truths inherent in the obsessive collection of almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts and pecans. The squirrels' technique is failsafe, even if it does tax a feeder's nut budget. Squirrels have never been famous for doing anything on the cheap.

From at least 8:45 a.m. until well past 2 p.m. this past Wednesday, the outdoor scene, from suburbia to the sticks, was very much a cache-and-carry affair for the squirrels, who carried the keys to the next 24 hours of weather activity carefully between their teeth.

This forecasting system may well date back to the days of Scrat, the prehistoric squirrel whose understated glories came to the forefront in the series of animated "Ice Age" movies. Ah, Hollywood does not do Scrat's talents justice. Talk about a squirrel with overwhelming power and prescience: He not only predicted the Ice Age - his lust for a single acorn caused it!

So if you want to know the possible strength of winds heading your way, talk to the small mother squirrel with the blunted tail and the engagingly dirty nose. The size of her carry-away stash foretells exactly the speeds the region will be buffeted by in just a few hours. Curious about the rawness of the temperatures and the abundance of the downpour yet to come? The chubby, slightly tilted fellow is resolute in creating a nut larder to see him through the ordeal.

Nut-o-Metric Pressure is world-renowned for such precision.

You could, of course, try convincing a squirrel to pose on your living room mantle, replacing that heirloom barometer passed down by great-great-grandpa. But it would be far more practical (and make for a happier squirrel) if you opened the front window or back door and tossed a few well-placed pecans. Interpreting a Nut-o-metric Pressure reading is deceptively intuitive: The greater the demand for nuts, the higher the degree of preparedness is needed for the meteorological mess that lies ahead.

The 17th century English poet Robert Herrick may have exhorted us to "gather ye rosebuds while ye may," but 21st century squirrels make weathercasting, in just this way, its own kind of simple poetry.

Nutcracker Suite-hearts

Finding holiday inspiration within the hard coldness of Russia's Ural Mountains, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky still should have known about the squirrels: When the 19th century composer set the magical story of an enchanted nutcracker to music in 1892, crafting "The Nutcracker Suite," he really should have done his homework first.

Squirrels, after all, don't just have an ethereal quality but were always the original nutcrackers. And as the Christmas season wraps itself around us, we are again charmed by Tchaikovsky's presentation of young Clara's romantic dream of a nutcracker prince. We watch the couple's affectionate pas de deux play out on stage.

Then, peering outside our own windows to a real-life stage beyond our homes, we see squirrel libidos engaged in a more shameless pas-de-do-it-and-do-it-again-and-again. The elegance and charm of tutus and tights have nothing to do with this rodentian wrestling match. There is nothing sweet about what these nutcrackers are doing.

Tell us, Tchaikovsky, what's a Sugar Plum Fairy to do? We could seek counsel from the squirrel-savvy Mouse King and his loyal army -- the antagonists of the "Nutcracker" tale -- but who wants advice from the bad guys?

Besides, the king gets killed off early in the story. (The classical version of the "Nutcracker" is devoid of sex but not of violence, garnering Tchaikovsky a modern-day "PG-13" rating.)

However, the dance outside our doors is more akin to "50 Shades of Eastern Grey," with a passion that might melt even Tchaikovsky's most brutal Russian mountain snows.

Wildlife rehabilitators need to forget Tchaikovsky altogether. It's time to compose ourselves instead: For the fictional Clara may awaken from her "Nutcracker" dream beneath the Christmas tree embracing her treasured wooden nutcracker toy - and the prince will have vanished back into her dream.

But when wildlife caretakers awaken (even ones named Clara), the prince hasn't gone anywhere - and neither has the princess. They are grey, bushytailed, and their hormones are in full reproductive rage.

In the kingdom of the woods, squirrels are the reigning princes and princesses. And even once Christmas has long passed, the impassioned mating dance of these nutcrackers will go on.

Nuts to this parade!

Macy's annual Thanksgiving pageantry of floats and fancy footwork is no match for a certain timeless backyard promenade. It's a longstanding tradition of parades that, over the years, never mandated any holiday be declared before the personalities readily queued up, marching with perfect precision: Sumo, Almondo, Mr. Tilty, WhiteSpot, Balducci, Little Notch Ear, Silas Marner, Sunshine, Calypso, The Brothers Grimm, Sylvie and, the very first, Scoiattolo.

Frankly, Spider-Man, Snoopy, Kermit the Frog and Papa Smurf - all of them little more than cartoon balloons - prove to be New York City lightweights in the face of parade professionals such as these.

Linus and Charlie Brown, prepare for the deflating news: Squirrels not only have their feet on the ground, they've got their paws right down in the dirt. They're the only marching band in the procession of time that we really need to mark the passage of another season. After all, if Thanksgiving is a time of bounty, who knows more about harvesting and putting things away for the winter than those who measure their steps outside our windows and doors every day?

Sorry, Macy's. Let retail madness come and go with the shortest days and longest nights of the year. Some of us prefer to take our chances with bushytail madness instead.

No rationale for rationing

In the spectrum of epic power struggles, Obama vs. Romney wielded all the energy and intensity concomitant with high-voltage politics: Sparks flew, tempers flared and fuses blew.

But in the northeast, people have already unplugged from that temperamental circuit of ego and agenda, focusing instead on a more day-to-day power struggle, one measured in the kilowatt-hours that animate homes and businesses and in miles-per-gallon for vehicles. Or perhaps not being measured: A superstorm and trailing nor'easter left nothing behind for tens of thousands in the region but a cold, dark void.

It is preferable and simpler, on such an occasion, to measure out one's days in squirrels. Living their lives off the grid, their momentum powered only by their own primordial engines, squirrels' comings and goings are a reliable constant in a world suddenly devoid of any human surety but deprivation.

Squirrels are small generators fueled by tree nuts and acorns, simple abundant energy that is "green" - after all, acorns and nuts are the genesis of trees. Gathering nuts requires no drilling, no hydrofracking, no windmills, no mining.

As "odd-even license plate" rationing takes hold for motorists to stem the region's gasoline panic, squirrels brazenly ignore the governmental directive and queue up en masse at the base of trees and at our doors and windows: There is no need for "odd-even" days to fill their larders. In any case, with squirrels being four-legged (most of them, anyway), the "even" days would likely produce pandemonium beneath the maples.

Nut power! It is what allows squirrels' super-fast metabolism to generate STUs (Squirrel Thermal Units) which keeps them warm even in sub-zero temperatures. (Should you ever hear their teeth chattering, be assured it is not because they're cold.)

The fuel giants, the utility companies and even the automotive industry need to hire consultants from Woodland Energy Enterprises and learn to harness the enduring power of nuts that will weather a hurricane, a tornado, even a so-called "superstorm."

Ask for some input from the next squirrel you encounter: Likely he'll gnaw on the matter a bit, but if you're lucky, he'll get back to you, saying, "Let's do lunch."

Doing Election Day, Squirrel Style

The squirrels are back from the polling place. The lines, of course, were long. But when their turns came, they voted, as usual, without hesitation or ambiguity.

They know what it means to live in a Nutocracy. Whether one is a follower of Walnuts, Pecans or the fiercely independent Hazelnuts, squirrels value the right to elect the nut of their choosing.

Squirrels know that the dynamic of politics is, and always has been, the kind of shell game one can really sink their teeth into. These stalwart little citizens vote with their feet - lacking hands, they really have no choice, anyway.

And now, their Election Day duties done, they are back outside, begging for handouts. This is not Wildlife Welfare, however, nor government entitlement. It is their birthright as American Eastern Grey Squirrels to have free and open access to the fruit of America's trees. They constitute the swing vote, only in that they swing from the trees.

As the sun sets soon on Election Day 2012, and the nation faces change - or perhaps more of the same - I pledge allegiance once again to the squirrels, one of the few constants we can count on in a modern nation growing ever more distressed.

Never mind the blue or the red. I will always follow the grey. Long may their tails wave.

No great squirrel debate

In the American political landscape, where the present presidential skirmish once again pits the Blue against the Red, squirrels - who dwell happily in the land of the Grey - opt out:

Squirrels do not hold elections. Squirrels do not vote. Squirrels do not engage in politics. Thus squirrels have no need to engage in debate.

The world of the Eastern Grey is very much black and white: If you've got a nut, they'll take it. If you don't, there's no deal.

The squirrels' only campaign is to effectively charm you so you elect to empty your pockets in their presence. These nut offerings aren't political handouts, however. Nor are they campaign contributions. In this world populated by tree-dwelling citizens, acorns, walnuts and pecans are merelyy hard-earned wages from a full day of hard-core squirreling, a day's labor that begins as the sun rises, and doesn't cease 'til it sets.

And while squirrels can dig up dirt better than any political candidate, they're not looking to discredit any opponent. They're simply saving for the hard winter ahead.

Social Security? That's their "nut cache." Free medical care? It's called "wildlife rehabilitation" (and a squirrel is likely to qualify for it only if they're fortunate enough to be saved by a savvy rescuer).

There is a reason the donkey and the elephant were selected, over the squirrel, to symbolize American politics. Call them what you will, but American rivals Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are anything but squirrelly. Let them debate this season on every major network, in every state and on every stage, and let them hash out the national deficit, military conflicts, and the healthcare conundrum.

What it really comes down to is this: Can either candidate crack walnuts with his teeth? Can either build a nest in fewer than 24 hours? And can either man leap effectively from treetop branch to branch with the same energy they use to jump over each other's logic.

The world - and the voters - may be watching, but do the squirrels even care? That's debatable.

Squirrel is my co-pilot

What's next? Drivers' licenses for squirrels? It's only a matter of time, apparently, even though we already have more than our share of nuts behind the wheel.

Take the recent case of the Clay County, Florida motorist who was pulled over for DUI - driving under the influence. Turns out there was another reason he was driving distracted: He was also Driving Under the Influence of a Squirrel. A small bushytail was busy navigating the roadmap of the driver's chest hairs and had obviously entered a problematic intersection, or perhaps it was a bottleneck, somewhere in the southwest quadrant of the human's abdomen. Without any GPS to help him, the squirrel obviously freaked.

Still, a moving violation is a moving violation. The squirrel did not deserve a ticket but the driver clearly had one coming. Probably two: Owning a so-called "pet" squirrel may not have merited a fine but it's clear the squirrel - as seen in a video shot by the local TV station, WJXT - was quite young. Where was the government-mandated booster seat for infants and children? Had this driver been the parent of a 10-month-old, would he have considered it appropriate to stick the child in his underwear too?

As any Department of Motor Vehicle Commissioner will tell you, there are clearly proper ways to drive with a squirrel in one's vehicle. Pay heed then, to the example set by Pyotr Pankratau, who was a soldier in the Belarussian army when rescued a young Eurasian red squirrel. The creature who has so adapted to his caretaker's civilian lifestyle that he rarely leaves his side, even when Pankratau goes on his rounds as a taxi-driver.

It is noted that, in all photos seen on the Internet of Pankratau and his squirrel, Minsk, the animal is never shoved up his shirt. In fact, he keeps a respectful distance from any kind of underwear while on duty. Yes, in a few photos, Minsk is seen on the vehicle's dashboard - as an auto accoutrement one might liken to fuzzy dice or a living, breathing bobblehead doll - but let the record show that the taxi is always safely parked - and the engine is off - whenever the squirrel is in motion.

And he never gets behind the wheel.

Perhaps the philosophy of Squirrel Chauffeuring is a different matter in Belarus - or anywhere outside the United States, for that matter. But the safety issues are clear:

Before getting behind the wheel, park your squirrel somewhere safely. Drunk or sober, friends don't let friends drive squirrels.

Down to a science

Pity poor Galileo Galilei. The Italian astronomer-physicist first posited that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

Oh, it's not that this champion of the Scientific Revolution was wrong. But his timing surely was. The 17th century that marked Galileo's lifetime was at least three centuries before the birth of Squirrelfest. If only the wise professor from Pisa had been able to make his way to Longview, Washington this summer - thus crossing an ocean as well as a vast expanse of forward-moving time - he'd have experienced first-hand that many things can indeed occupy the same space at the same time through the magic of devotion to all things squirrel.

In Longview, residents celebrate the city's mascots by taking to the streets in this daylong event, which just marked its second year on Aug. 25. The day is a concurrent celebration of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Memorial Day and Independence Day.

Only in this Pacific Northwest city can these holidays occupy the same time and space in seeming defiance of scientific theory:

Longview gives thanks for its squirrels and for the safe roadway crossings many have enjoyed since 1963 when one kind resident, Amos Peters, built Longview's first squirrel bridge as a gift that would help ensure their safe street-crossings. The installation of "Nutty Narrows" eventually inspired two other bridges. This year's award-winning span, the city's third, was an aluminum design from a retired attorney who'd died only weeks before the dedication ceremony.

It's a pity Galileo didn't know of Squirrelfest. He would surely have embraced it for its squirrelcentricity. The scientist was among the first, after all, to stand beside Nicolaus Copernicus after the Renaissance astronomer declared his radical theory that - hold onto your acorns, folks! - the Earth and other planets revolved around the sun.

The sun? That's not necessarily as true in Longview, Washington. There, everything revolves around the squirrels - even the sun of Nicolaus Copernicus. Its own perfect squirrelcentric orbit is made even more perfect by the way its rays wash down brightly, illuminating their path as they cross the newest squirrel bridge in town, then leap gracefully to safety in sunlit woods beyond.

Final homecoming

We can rescue them from abandonment, cruelty or neglect. We can save them from the devastating impact of a predator's assault, from injury, ailment or even congenital flaw.

Indeed, we can even endeavor to deflect the very damage caused by others of our own species. Tragically, wildlife rescuers undertake this all too often.

Prairie dogs - native North American ground squirrels with a highly social nature - are special creatures of the earth. They thrive in an unseen, underground metropolis that is ever-diminishing throughout the American West. And their rescue historically has not always been a popular prospect there.

In 2003, the symbol of their struggle emerged from a burrow on an East Coast beach. This gentle female was pulled from the unlikely New York setting 9 Augusts ago, almost to the day of this writing. An unexpected media star who illuminated the unrelenting genocide against her species, Fire Island Philomena, as she came to be called, was embraced as well in pet-rescue circles. A transplant to New York via the retail trade, she was an exotic pet who shared the pain of her more conventional brother and sister companion animals: Her entertainment value had clearly run an almost fatal course with the humans who had purchased her. They dumped her on a grassy Atlantic barrier beach just beneath a busy hawk migration flyway.

Her detection and triumphant rescue 18 months later made headlines. And so, for a time, did the politics of wildlife persecution itself. But the rescue ultimately fulfilled its most private mission: Fire Island Philomena spent the next 9 years living back underground, at least in spirit, in a burrow of quiet anonymity with others of her own kind.

She had no issues, no trauma, no complications from her ordeal. She simply went forward into her life. This is, after all, the essence of wildlife rescue: to restore the future that is every animal's birthright.

But even rescue has its endpoint, as do the lives of these squirrels which, on the prairie, rarely extend past 5 or 6 years. There is no dispensation, then, when days become months and months become years. The body becomes weary even if the spirit still soars.

Tonight her spirit soared. There is no rescue from the cycle of life and, perhaps, no need for it after all. This gentle creature, grown too old for the earth that once sustained her, has gone home again.

Head games

There is pig-headedness. There is strong-headedness. There is hard-headedness.

And now, it seems, there is Squirrel-headedness.

Well, perhaps Squirrel-headedness was there all along: After all, the Rodentian Mindset interprets that anything and everything in the world is a buffet set out for them and them alone. So perhaps that is why the infamous Archie McPhee novelty company - those wonderful folks who previously brought his 'n her Squirrel Underwear and Squirrel Coffee Mugs to market - recently began hawking (ooops, poor choice of words here) this oversized cranial nut carrier intended - as their own website boasts - "to both feed and humiliate squirrels at the same time."

Oh my. So bigger isn't necessarily better? This oversized, toothy likeness is the ultimate weapon of mass humiliation?

Ask any squirrel who's tried to cram 3, 4 or 5 nuts into his or her mouth while soliciting handouts from human slaves, and no doubt they'd disagree with the intention here. Bigger is better, say the squirrels, particularly since squirrels don't wear hats and thus the possession of an oversized head doesn't pose any challenges to millinery shops specializing in squirrel gear. Big-headedness simply connotes more storage space, additional real estate for the nut cache.

"Don't get a big head about this," we caution the squirrels as, day after day, we eject pounds and pounds of the finest pecans and walnuts out our windows in and back doors in their direction, as a means of feeding and placating them. "Don't think this means anything, don't think we love you. We are just amusing ourselves by feeding and humiliating you."

Oh how humiliated they look as they run off, bury the stash and come back for the inevitable second and third helpings. Surely everyone is jeering back in the home nest. (Just not at them.)

If you are reading this, Archie McPhee, I predict the Big Head will be a Big Hit among rodentia, and they'll get the last laugh, flicking their tails, stamping their feet and chattering in amusement as humans hand over their $15 - money that could otherwise be better spent on nuts, as the squirrels themselves will point out. Some consumers will fall for anything, say the squirrels, who are clearly a more discriminating bunch themselves.

Who's humiliating whom?

Archie McPhee should have thought this one through and perhaps quit while he was ahead.

The land of the free?

In the solitary lifestyle of the eastern gray squirrel, there are no united states. For these proud separatists, independent living defines the American way. And so, flaunting such solitude, these squirrels wave their patriotism with every defiant flick of their lush tails.

Still, more than 230 years after the founding fathers inked this North American nation's Declaration, there do remain Americans who nonetheless thrive in their original colonies: Southern flying squirrels, northern flying squirrels, prairie dogs and all manner of ground squirrels including the Richardson's ground squirrel, the golden mantled ground squirrel and the 13-lined ground squirrel (one stripe perhaps for each of our nation's fledgling states?)

These colonies populate the scattered rock outcrops of the American West, as well as the nation's expansive prairie.

This is America, after all, where colonists and rugged individualists together have made our nation what it is: the land of the free and the home of the wild. They are free to live - but not free to live without threat of extermination. Theirs is a collective cry - not against taxation but annihilation. Solitary or colonial, they are all sought for gassing, poisoning, hunting and trapping.

As our country celebrates the rights its human citizens won not quite three centuries ago, let us not forget the rights of the small and helpless who share our hard-won land.

Freedom is not truly freedom unless such independence belongs to us all.

Joining the movement

Oh poo.

Yes, let the potty jokes begin.

Much has been written in the last few weeks about the power of flying squirrel poop - not so much as a lethal projectile from overhead, but as a healer of pain and an aid in blood disorders.

That's right: When it comes to medicinal value, squirrel excrement is excellent. These tiny cast-off nuggets are good as gold, even if their color isn't quite the 14-karat variety.

Squirrel feces in medicine is hardly a New Age notion. This concept of incorporating the tiny flyers' output into beneficial remedies, often through tea-like infusions, dates back thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicine, and it is still being taught at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in New York. This healing discipline also embraces the output from numerous other terrestrial and arboreal beings (but no doubt the flyers are among the cutest to be pooping for the cause).

Thousands of years of healing power makes for some pretty old poop, for sure. But can America's health care system change to embrace this old-time practice? Will the federal government soon subsidize outhouses for flyers, to facilitate collection of palliative ingredients?

And will these tiny nocturnal rodents soon hang out their shingles, keeping office hours at night, accepting acorns as copayments??

Indeed, our nation's widespread and costly addiction to painkillers could soon be remedied by requiring that all addicts in treatment maintain a colony of flyers who dispense natural analgesics out their back ends. There are, after all, worse things in life than a dependency on squirrels moving their bowels.

Australia, it seems, has already gotten with the program. A June 29 report in The Daily Telegraph heralds the celebrated arrival of such feces in that South Pacific Nation (which has no native flyers of its own). "Quarantine officials have given the green light to therapeutic poo imports, meaning animal dung could be coming to a shop near you," the report announced to its Australian readership.

Open-mindedness to change is a good thing, even if change is something that takes us back thousands of years instead of moving us forward.

And a light-hearted approach to it all can't hurt either. Because laughter is good medicine, too.

So don't be that quick to pooh-pooh. Let's leave that to the flyers.

One for the books

The squirrels, it seems, do not want us to spend time reading. They'd prefer we invest our hours in pursuits infinitely more sensible and practical.

Feeding them, for instance.

Consider this: Squirrels were never fans of Shakespeare. In his "King Lear," the monarch's mournful cry over a daughter's betrayal - "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child" - clearly underestimates the razor's edge of a squirrel's own incisors.

Today's squirrels have even less tolerance for the written word, even the naughty newbie, "50 Shades of Grey." Its title notwithstanding, its nakedly blatant adventures have nothing to do with the varied spectrum of squirrels' coats. It's about sex - lots and lots of sex - and squirrels don't seem to get any of that action either.

So it came perhaps as no surprise that in one New York county this past weekend, the book-loathing squirrels finally turned to desperate crime.

This wild squirrel antipathy against literacy spurred one singular, widepsread act of destruction: In suburban Suffolk County, a squirrel succeeded in shutting down the library system - or at least, for a few hours, cutting off its main computerized operations by employing a tooth that was likely sharper than a Shakespearean serpent's.

Hard-working librarians no longer had access to their vital databases, rendering them all but useless at assisting patrons.

Victory, for a time, belonged to that group of small mammals relegated to section "599" in the Dewey Decimal System. The category 599, the mammals, seemed suddenly to rise to the ranks of a global superpower.

The squirrels, no doubt, chattered happily knowing that their covert operation meant that even Beatrix Potter's "Squirrel Nutkin," a fictitious creature requiring no real-life handouts, would find frustration in any efforts to leave the shelves. Smugly, Suffolk's squirrels sat back and waited for the hoped-for massive run on grocery stores where readers, left with nothing to read, would become feeders. They would rush to the market, buy up huge quantities of walnuts and pecans, then head for tree-lined parks, bags in hand.

But even power outages don't last forever. In the end, it was much ado about nothing of permanence. As the juice came back on, squirrels' collective hopes dimmed. Their puckish antics were, as Shakespeare himself might say, merely a "Midsummer Night's Dream."

Going free

His life began, as it does for all squirrels, in darkness. But when the critical 4-week period of his development arrived, bringing the promise of that welcome fifth sense, there was no sunlight to greet him: He'd been born without the eyes that would have let the world in.


The squirrel's rescue was the stuff of myths. We found this small creature ourselves, a gray body rolling about in the midst of traffic on a busy road one early evening in 2002. When we scooped him up, dodging traffic all the while, we discovered he was mysteriously unscathed. His skin betrayed not a single scratch, he harbored not a single flea. He appeared a picture-perfect juvenile of about 15 or 16 weeks, well past the weaning stage. He was, quite possibly, a squirrel of newfound independence from the birth nest.

Except for those eyes. The eyes that weren't.

How a squirrel denied vision could have made it this far - then made it to the center of a well-trafficked thoroughfare - will forever remain a mystery to us. Perhaps even to this squirrel, who was given the name Stevie Wonder. He was, in every way, a wonder - and more.

Our job, as rehabilitators, is not to keep, to collect nor to cage what is rightfully nature's. Our job is to give back, to restore, to make whole again. With Stevie Wonder, this was not possible. A veterinarian's exam confirmed that his eyes had never - and would never - develop. And so this gentle being learned to navigate a vastly narrower world, find joy in food, toys and such simple creature comforts as a hammock.

Ten years passed. A decade borrowed from beneath the crushing wheels of a car can be a gift. And so it was.

We can be certain of two truths central to the work of wildlife rehabilitation: The animals you raise are going to die. They will either die in your care or, someday, out there in the trees, well beyond your care and beyond your own field of vision. Perhaps these are things we are not meant to see.

But still, there are some things we hope to gaze upon: A few days ago, a young male and female squirrel left our care, ecstatically free as they ran out into the sunlit woods, released into the lifetime of wholeness they were born to seek.

That same week, Stevie Wonder took his leave of us. This, however, was a goodbye we had neither planned nor expected. An elderly squirrel, he slipped from the confinement of his sightless body and found his way to his own moment of release.

His life ended as it had begun - in darkness. Shortly before midnight he returned to nature, and the world he never saw made him whole again.

High and mighty

Rest assured, the squirrels are not impressed with Nik Wallenda. The seventh-generation member of his family's world-famous daredevil act, Wallenda enjoyed a different kind of Niagara Falls honeymoon this week. He went head over heels - all the while keeping his balance - as he walked an 1,800-foot-long tightrope suspended 200 feet over the pounding falls.

"So what?" says our nation's collective chorus of eastern grays, reds, fox squirrels and flying squirrels. "Can he leap from branch to branch at the very tops of hundred-year-old trees? Does this Wallenda guy regularly cross busy highways balanced on a power line - one that is surging, we might add, with dangerous electric juice?

"And what," the squirrels continue, "is the deal with that safety harness?" Indeed, Wallenda's high-altitude, waterscaped border crossing between New York and Canada had the wearable insurance policy of the harness, a presumed requirement of ABC, the TV network that broadcast the nighttime stunt. Understandably, ABC was looking to keep Wallenda as live as the telecast.

Arboreal squirrels of all varieties who are lucky enough to retain their tails for the entirety of their lives are, likewise, equipped by nature with such a harness, albeit a lesser one. But there are no network camera crews lighting their passage across dangerous turf, whether it is wooded, watery or paved - and there are no crowds of well-wishing spectators cheering them on, from either sides of their journey. They are not even guaranteed a particularly grand welcome on the other side, assuming they've achieved safe passage. Predators could be waiting - instead of vendors selling souvenir T-shirts embossed with: "I saw a gray squirrel cross Route 17 and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."

For squirrels who traverse the world at high altitudes, such highwire acts are not stunts but survival. So who's the real daredevil here?