It is widely known that New York City is filled with rats, waiting in the shadows on walks home and disturbing the peace with such intensity that you wonder if they will ever find their own. However, rats are not the only rodents who have claimed the land we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking is ours– existing among us, on any patch of green they can find, is the squirrel.
Squirrels give off relatively harmless energy at first glance. We associate them with parks and trees, they don’t startle us in unexpected places like rats, or pester us for bread like pigeons. They just gather food for their little squirrel families in the nooks and crannies of the natural world. On second glance, squirrels have a look in their beady black eyes that I just can’t shake. I’ve witnessed them dig their hands and nose into the dirt to hide their food with an urgency that leaves it unknown to me whether food is a scarcity for them or if it is just all they know.
My mom throws nuts into our backyard for the squirrels that we watch from the window as they climb up trees, just to peer at us from the top of our fence. It’s routine now, the squirrels expect to be fed, they know she will be there, she buys a bag of peanuts at the store every other week, and yet they hoard the nuts under the bark of our backyard for safekeeping, not knowing when they might go hungry. They won’t, their rapid and skillful movements are built to find food and repopulate the Earth with it, but nothing else. Squirrels have the fault and privilege of a life without critical thought.
Every now and then, I catch one of their eyes while strolling around Stuytown and suddenly, I want to befriend them. At first, they are hesitant but as our eyes stay locked, they start to wonder if I might be of use to them. Closing in unexpectedly, the urgency in their movements turns into curiosity for a closer look.
That moment isn’t about the squirrel, it is about me. I have interrupted the squirrels’ flow state; in between gathering, eating, digging, and climbing, they have gained an audience and in turn broken the fourth wall. Their job remains the same with or without my presence, but in their presence, I am changed. I’m entranced by the way the squirrel navigates its duties without hesitation. The squirrel may wonder where its next meal is hiding but they know that if it is somewhere, they will find it–it is all they know. I know so much more about the squirrel than it knows about me but what the squirrel can do is beyond my reach.
I am by no means good with my hands yet they are imperative to my functioning smoothly. They give me so much but what they hold isn’t particularly hard to reach. They do what I need them to with the world that I’ve been given and yet it seems much less impressive than the work of the squirrel. There are days when I wonder how I would survive if I had a longer commute to the grocery store, but for squirrels, the world is their supermarket and they are the ones restocking it.
Squirrels are defined by what they do even if they have no real choice in the matter. In contrast, much more than I do things– I think about them; while that makes me less focused, more hesitant, and less nimble than the squirrel, it is a small price to pay for the worlds I can access within uniquely human layers of consciousness. All the squirrel can do is work with what it is given– I can work with what has not yet been created. I long to be able to do something of service with my hands, but perhaps using them as a vessel for my brain to reach pen and paper is service enough.
Currently Listening:
- DECIDE by Djo
