Squirrels, etc.

As I often see squirrels in Frick Park these late Fall days (it seems that the cooling down that comes before winter inspires some urgency in them), I've begun to think a bit more about them. When I first moved to Pittsburgh from Minneapolis, I mentioned-- in passing-- albino squirrels to a friend of mine. They are a common sight back home: bleach white, with laser red eyes. There is a spookiness about their presence, and I know that it is wrong, but that spookiness always sort of reminded me about why animals-- and people-- with albinism in some cultures are regarded as harbingers of death.

My friend had never heard of such a thing. Indeed, in Pittsburgh I have never seen one. Research that I have done since has not answered for me very conclusively if these squirrels are a species unto themselves, or just a more common squirrel that truly does have some genetic abnormality. I have concluded, however, that I was mistaken in my long held belief that they were so numerous in Minneapolis because of their ability to camouflage well in the snowdrifts of winter: there are apparently many colonies of albino squirrels around the country, and several of these colonies are located in the snow-less South.

I contemplate all of this as I sit in Frick Park, on a day approaching Halloween, that is crisp, cool and sunny. The squirrels seem less numerous now than they do in the warm months, but I can see them scurrying up or down the occasional tree. I remember when I used to live in a house on Minneapolis's Southside: an old American Foursquare in an old neighborhood that hugged a highway which looped around downtown. In this house (revamped into a four-plex) we had an infestation of squirrels one winter, and in the Spring, one of them managed to chew through the ceiling and was routinely poking his head out through a hole and into the upper level apartment. Our maintenance man set out poison in the attic, and the next squirrel I saw was dead on the back lawn.

I retrieved a shovel from my parents house the day that I encountered the squirrel, and buried it a few feet deep in the soft, Spring ground. A few days later, we had a ceremony for it in the backyard, where my roommate burned white sage, and I recited a sort of elegy I had written. This squirrel had been dutifully gathering nuts for his family, had been doing the things that were natural and instinctual to him, ensuring his own survival. And, as his bad luck would have it, he happened to get in our way.

It interests me, now, to think about the convergence of human society and of the society of squirrels-- the society of *all* of nature, really. As I watch the squirrels clawing up and down trees to the deep, cave-like holes where they stash and burrow food, I am left to wonder what-- if anything-- they have retrieved this Fall from one of the robust blue garbage cans near the parks trails. I've seen squirrels once in a while poking their heads out from inside of those, or heard them thrashing around against a can's plastic walls. What could they find in their that provides for them an appropriate amount of nourishment? What has our presence-- our human society-- done for them that is good?