I am a Dumpster Squirrel. Are you?

It’s not just the ADHD. I’m like squirrels in OTHER ways too. INTRIGUED?? READ ON FOR MORE JUICY NUGGETS!

Wild Squirrels know what they are supposed to do. They build nests when it is time to. They gather fresh fruit when it’s time to. They bury nuts when it is time to. They leap across the forest canopy with great agility and grace. They know how to direct their attention for the best outcomes, so that their energy is used to increase chances survival for their offspring.

City squirrels sometimes know what they are supposed to do. On my short morning walk today I encountered not one but TWO departed squirrels. One was smeared across the road. Its tail was mangy, indicating that it was unwell even before its final incident. The other squirrel was a sturdy fellow with bushy, healthy tail, completely intact, lying stiff in the middle of the sidewalk. I can only assume that his death somehow involved the powerline running overhead.

Acclimating to different habitats takes a while, right?

I used to eat fried squirrel. Born a country girl, I have been transplanted in the city for 14 years now, the number of years my students have been alive. I am adapting to city life. There are no poisonous snakes here, and no one eats squirrels, thus, there isn’t much reason for me to own a firearm.

Squirrels frequent the dumpster directly behind our house in the alley; they find it a veritable Golden Corral Buffet. This did not concern me personally until their frantic gluttony caused them to destroy EVERY PEACH on my backyard peach tree BEFORE A SINGLE PEACH WAS EVEN RIPE.

I was like, you guys are supposed to know how to wait until something is EDIBLE before you try to eat it. But no. Green peaches with one bite gnawed in them, thrown randomly all over the yard. I would have been less angry if they had been playing basketball with them. But no. Yank, bite, discard. I tried various utterly ineffective tactics to dissuade the squirrels including but not limited to hollering, screaming, waving things, throwing things, and cussing.

They would pause a moment in their green-peach destruction plan, sitting in the tree to chitteringly laugh at me as I screamed and threw things at them. Ridiculing me in my helpless, flailing attempt to make them understand, these things WOULD BE FOOD SOON if you’d just wait a few weeks, and I would be happy to share, hell, I’d be happy to give you 82% of them, if you’d just let them get ripe!

But no, the destructive waste was more fun.

So I got to thinking. What happened to these deranged squirrels? Shouldn’t their mamas or their grandmas be slapping them upside the head?

So I started watching what they were eating out of the dumpsters.

Pizza boxes with cheese stuck to them. Styrofoam cups with ice cream residue. Stale hot dog buns.

These squirrels have forgotten what food is. They live in a frenzy of trying to obtain the neurological high they get from the fat, sugar, and white flour that they find in the dumpsters.

THEY ARE ADDICTED TO OUR CRAP NUTRITIONLESS FOOD. So they have entirely forgotten how to be squirrels. They know they are supposed to get stuff, run around, maybe dig holes. But, unlike wild squirrels, they are dependent on the humans’ trash. So all their logarhythns are off.

I saw a damaged spider once. It still knew how to produce silk, and it knew it was supposed to go round and round spinning it. But it had forgotten how to do the pattern. Its web had lost its beautiful, functional, naturally installed sense of order; it was now a pathetic, disorganized, stress-flavored tangle.

That’s what the squirrels are doing. Instead of purposeful movements that lead to survival, they are trying to adapt to the man-made world, doing the best they can among electrified wires, murderous two-ton metal cars, and addictive but nutritionless food. They run around in stressed-out circles, ridiculously destroying what could sustain them, because they are living BOTH in extreme plenty and in extreme danger.

What percentage of human habitual actions installed in our bodies to help us survive are still useful to us in our highly artificial world?

What percentage of the conveniences we enjoy are actually crippling us, causing us to be maladapted to living happy, healthy lives?

Our bodies, like the squirrels’ bodies, are made from the soil of the earth and the energy of the sun. Human souls do the best they can in the finite vessels created for them. I wonder, how much of our modern emotional distress is akin to the ridiculous mis-activity of the squirrels or the wounded spider, caused by maladaptation to a quickly-changing environment?

Nobody ever asked the squirrel.

So I figured I would ask him.

Here is a poem from the point of view of the dead squirrel:

I like the air

I hate fire

Find the food eat the food hide the food

mostly keep others from gettin the food

Jump and run and stay up

Live fast

Die fast no suffering

I won’t live sick

I’ll eat whatever smells good

I like dumpster food

Humans throw away good white food bread sugar

I like

It makes me climb higher run faster

But then I fall out of the tree and die

I can’t tell where I am

Human food makes me feel I’m not here today

I want to eat more

I must find more

Always more

Living  next day

Wanting to live tomorrow

I eat dead things, live things

My mom knew how to save things

I don’t

there’s too much

No reason to dig stupid holes and save it

Waste of work

Get more eat more

Run more

I’m fast now but I won’t live as long as mom

I will die sooner

I will die fat and slow

I don’t like myself

I want to live tomorrow

Let me live tomorrow not now

I didn’t like yesterday

I don’t like now

I need more food for tomorrow

But there will all ways be more so why save?

So I can’t like what i have always looking for tastier

Or what makes me faster

Jump better

Mom said nuts

I said bread

Mom said greens 

I said sweets

I don’t know where mom went

I think she is dead

Are we supposed to help each other?

I forgot

There is sugar in my head

I ate too much junk

Now there is buzzing

I just want more sweet white bread

Or to live tomorrow

Or for it all to end