Spiral Dance of Squirrels: Inspired by "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk" A Modest Bestiary, by David Sedaris with illustrations by Ian Falconer Published by Little Brown and Company 2010
Spiral Dance of the Squirrels
There was once a family of black squirrels who lived happily in a large Maple tree on a secluded quiet street in a small suburban neighbourhood. Father squirrel thought he did everything right, or at least very well within exceptable squirrel parameters. He worked hard at gathering nuts, and taking care of their young brood of babies making sure they were well groomed and taken care of both in an emotional and physical sense. He played games with them and kept them entertained with stories he made up about the other animals in the nearby forest.
He soon discovered that mother squirrel was not as content as she once was when they first did their mating rituals when he had to chase her to dizzying heights up and down trees to get her attention. It started with little things like the nest was never big enough or nice enough. She always made conversations about herself even when the kids came home from nut gathering or even just play with exuberant stories of their adventures. She had a powerful way of making their stories small and by extension making them feel small. Maybe this made her feel big.
She played her own games of praising one of the babies for some small accomplishment while ignoring the others. This seemed to make the others compete for mom’s attention and make the favoured one angry with her sibs for doing so. The baby squirrels would brings extra twigs at nest building time or find an extra chestnut all to gain mother’s favour and be the chosen one, only to find that this status was rewarded on a rotating basis and when one fell from grace it was a humiliating and painful experience.
Despite the perpetual pain the baby squirrels always tried to please their mom even when she gossiped about them to others, even outside the nest, or when she listened in on their private conversations. Mother was good at using the information for her own purpose constantly causing disharmony and chaos in the family while all the time saying how much she loved them all equally.
Eventually, Daddy squirrel grew to the outside of the family because he had a sense of how wrong things were and he and mother would fight over many little things like the conditions in the nest, how the young were treated, any little thing became an issue until one day Daddy saw Mother squirrel running spirals up another Maple tree with a grey squirrel from another territory.
When Father asked about mother’s bizarre behaviour he was told that he was allowed to stay in the nest to help take care of their young but she would continue to do the mating spiral rituals with other squirrels as she now found this more to her liking. Meanwhile, the young oblivious to daddy’s plight just kept on competing for her attention as their mom introduced them to many of her new male friends, even taking them on trips together.
Eventually Dad felt he had no choice and after a big argument with his wife, for which she later convinced all their friends was his fault, he left the nest to another forest, first one near by and then one more distant. Too late he realized that if he had lied, gossiped, cheated, used the children as pawns and done the mating spiral with many other squirrels, as his wife had done, his children would probably still see him, but as it was his wife had pretty well convinced all in the forest of his evil ways and bad intentions. Much to late he realized that playing by the rules of the forest does not work.
Mother squirrel got all the nuts and the nest too.
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