A Marshmallow on the Bus

The Life of a Squirrel

I was on the bus this morning, on the way to my second bus to work, when I saw something move across the tree on the corner. Typically nothing out the window catches my eye because it’s so much the sameevery day, but this time I watched as two crazy in love squirrels chased each other around the thick branches, ducking in and out of sight as if they were playing hide and seek. That’s what squirrels do in mating season.

Squirrels are everywhere in New York. Most people call them rats with bushy tails. But suddenly, I needed to know more about squirrels so I did about two minutes’ worth of research on them and found out a couple of interesting squirrel facts. One is that late winter is indeed their mating season, but most adult squirrels live alone. Their life expectancy ison average around six years and more city squirrels die dodging cars than byreaching the ripe old age of six. Country squirrels are more likely to die when they can’t find enough food. They live on nuts and berries, which I knew, and their name is derived from Greek, meaning “one who lives in the shadow of their tail.”

So I wondered this morning what it’s like to be a squirrel. There I was on my way to my office with the same emails and reports and phone calls andirritations I had yesterdayor the day before, and here were these two amorous squirrels justchasing each other around the tree. I knew pretty much everything that would happen in my own next hour, but these little critters were completely free to script theirs. They could chase, or make love, or hunt for nuts together andthen do it all over again or just curl up inside that tree andnap, tails entwined together.

What they do not know is that their life expectancy is only six years, assuming they are successfulcrossing the street later today. That is such a different way to go about business, not knowing your life expectancy. Maybe they think they are immortal or that it’s only cars that stand in the way of their  living forever. Maybe they know that theyneedto make the most of the day, or maybe they just take the next hour at face value. I can’t be certain, but I think taking an hour on squirrel terms might be preferable sometimes to my knowing everything about the next hour.

They say that listening to familiar music is calming because you can predict the outcome. If you hear the opening few bars of Beethoven’sFifth Symphony or God Bless America, you relax because you know where it’s going. For the next few minutes, you won’t be caught off guard or surprised. That’s why the musical comedian Peter Schickele was such a hit with classical music lovers in the 1970s. We all thought we knew where the music was going, so when Schickele, AKA PDQ Bach, took us in with the familiar and then led us down another musical path, it was hilarious because it did catch us off guard. He would start a familiar classical tune and end up somewhere in Yankee Doodleor HappyBirthday. In some small way, he taught us not to relax, not to predict, not torely on experience or habit. Stay in the moment and see where it leads you.

But today, the Ash Wednesday admonition is running in the back of this observation – the blessing about being dust and returning to dust. It’s one of the reasons I don’t like any part of that ash process. I prefer not to be reminded of my mortality today. I want to be like those two squirrels.

They don’t know what the day has to offer other than they have blue skies, their owntree, and each other for comfort and warmth. Today is a day for squirrels. They don’t know cars will kill them if they aren’t fast enough and they don’t know they will likely not see their seventh year. They just know what’s in front of them today and that they need nuts to survive. No bills, no mortgage, no complicated family obligations, few worries other than their nut supply, and nobody expects them to do much.

In many ways, I live in the shadow of my tail too, and today, for just the duration of a bus ride from the Bronx to Manhattan, Iwanted to live the life of a squirrel.