who is a squirrel, a grey California ground squirrel to be exact. We’ve been getting to know each other for about a week now, and what a week it’s been! She’s still rather shy about photographs (I snapped that first one before she realized it). But given our plans, I know that she’ll warm to the idea eventually.
As it turns out, I was correct last week when I sighted Adele for the first time, she had indeed hitched a ride down the hill with us. And what’s more, she does mean to stay close to us. She’s been working on her domicile in our back yard and she accompanies us on our daily walk our neighborhood shopping district. She seems very interested in our activities. Perhaps it seems strange for me to write this all with such certainty. This all merits more explanation. I had my hunches about this little squirrel, but it wasn’t until yesterday evening that I fully understood what was happening.
A dear friend of ours works up at the park my little guy and I visited last week and she was over for dinner last evening. She and I share a love of animals and we have each devoted a good deal of time to communing with various members of the animal kingdom with the hopes of sharing experiences and insights into living on planet earth. It is a subtle art and one that I mostly find baffling, yet for some reason I persist in sitting and being with non-human animals.
It was a lovely summer evening here and so we were dining outside which meant that Adele was there too, nibbling on her pinecones and other tasty morsels from our garden and fruit trees. Given our common passion, I brought my friend’s attention to Adele, and was surprised to find that they recognized each other. It was then that we all realized that my new friend and the little baby squirrel who my friend had cared for, named Adele, and befriended was one in the same. During her time with our mutual friend, Adele became completely enamored with the ways of humans. Of course I knew the story of their time together well because at the time that this was all occurring my friend had been telling me all about it.
In fact, I’d always been hopeful that I too would have the opportunity to have such a close relationship with a non-domesticated animal. And now, it would seem that such an opportunity has fallen in my lap. Adele came down the hill with us because she yearns to know more about our human ways. By some stroke of grace she’s chosen me to be her guide and after last evening we are all quite sure that she has chosen wisely given my friendship with her original human friend.
And so begins our adventure together. I’ve agreed to take Adele around this town of ours, to show her as much as she would like to know about our human ways. I’ll share our discoveries and stories here.