Short Stories: Squirrels

Growing up in a tiny backwoods community known as Bear Lake I learned early in life that we often have to share what we have with the other creatures who scamper, prance, or fly throughout our world. I developed a deep respect for most of God's creatures (other than mosquitoes and a few other creepy little crawlers that is).

So believe me when I say that I really and truly like squirrels. I love hearing them chatter as they go about their day and I go about mine. I love watching them leap from tree to tree, from tree to bird feeder, and their scampering quickly from here to there. However this food storing habit of the local squirrels does cause a little inconvenience to my way of doing things. It just so happens that squirrels bury a lot of the food that they wish to store, and by doing so they tend to ignore my idea of a wilderness garden, and they tend to create their own.

Squirrels squirrel away food. They pack it away, hide it, store it, bury it and then dig it up again on a rainy day. Squirrels bury the seeds that they stumble upon throughout their day, they bury nuts, they bury tiny bulbs, they even sneak into the dog's food bowl and bury her kernels of dog food. All this food tucked away to save for a more appropriate dining occasion, like the middle of winter when these same seeds and nuts, are buried under six feet of snow. Basically a rather crazy notion based on a rather squirrely pattern of living?

If you are a dog than this squirrel madness is just great. Our dog spends a great deal of her day sniffing out the little patches of 3 or 4 dog food kernels that are strategically buried throughout our property. She loves having her food turned into a game of hide and seek.

But then there is me and my idea of what I want buried and where....

My basic idea for my wilderness garden was to have my vegetable garden next to the house and then to plant a mix of herbs and flowers that would flow along pathway down toward the entrance of our property. Here the flowers would spread out along the banks of the driveway and continue out and along the highway in both directions till they reached the end of our property line.

Looking back now I think that certain other little creatures had a somewhat different image of how things should look. But oblivious to my fate I toted what felt like a gazillion rocks in order to create a natural rock garden effect in and around both my vegetable garden and my flower beds.

I transplanted wild roses from the vegetable bed to the flower bed whenever I found them creeping in where they were not supposed to be, and I purchased and planted a never ending supply of perennials so the flowers would bloom at different times of the season, and in a continuous cycle of one upon the other.

The wild roses and daisies that bloomed on our property added a natural mix to my purchased blooms, and this combination of natural as well as wild flowers, added to the herb plants to create an amazingly beautiful field of color.

My father brought me a number of shoots from his lilac bushes and I added them into my natural floral arrangement. I could visualize my gardens as they would look in future years and things seemed to be coming along just as I planned for them.

That is until about a hundred sunflowers plants started opening their heads.

Now what I soon discovered was that by giving the squirrels free run to the sunflower seed in my bird feeder I was actually telling them to "go plant it", which they most certainly did, everywhere and on a continuous basis.

Now it took my fuzzy little brain a while to figure out exactly what was going on so by the time I did it was just too late to stop the invasion. The sunflower seeds which our local squirrels had so diligently planted took root and then commenced to grow. The sunflowers grew in my vegetable garden, in my herb and flower gardens, at the front of the house, at the back of the house, beside our woodpiles, and even poking up from under the steps of our porch. Sunflowers were everywhere.

I was beginning to realize how hard those little squirrels must have worked to bury so many seeds throughout our property.

With most of these seedlings now busily growing, it was easy to tell which plants were of my choosing, and which ones were so eagerly planted by my tiny forest companions. The sheer amount of unplanned vegetation sprouting throughout the property really did cause me to wonder how much food these hard working squirrels eventually get to enjoy at the end of their work day.

So there is our dog busily sniffing down at the lower level of our property for her rightful share of the loot. I am looking out over the most brilliant red poppies growing at the back of our property and which I somehow dimly remember planting down by the roadway.

I cannot help but look out upon the array of various sized sunflower trees which dot our property. I really do have to marvel at how majestic a crop they truly are.

The sound of birds is everywhere. As they flit on and off the sunflower heads I know that at least a few creatures are enjoying the efforts that the squirrels have put in to storing food this past year.

By the way and just in case you are interested in a little fact about squirrels, it turns out that squirrels have a little difficulty distinguishing between what they have planted and what someone else has planted.

Squirrels do not like the taste of tulip bulbs but will dig them up on a regular basis to take a bite out of them just in case the next one that they dig up might be a little tastier than the last one that they uprooted.

Squirrels do happen to love the taste of poppy seeds, peanuts, and sunflower seeds.

My wilderness flower garden has definitely taken on a little different arrangement than I had planned on. Strangest thing is that I am growing a little fond of the craziness, and funny as it may seem, I kind of like it.