Perspective

We are setting up various "feeding stations" in our yard primarily for birds and keeping the squirrels out. I need to keep in mind the words of Lance Morrow, that "The wild animals fetch back at least 2 million years. They represent, we imagine, the first order of creation, and they are vividly marked with God's eccentric genius of design: life poured into pure forms, life unmitigated by complexities of consciousness, language, ethics, treachery, revulsion, reason, religion, premeditation or free will. A wild animal does not contradict its own nature, does not thwart itself, as man endlessly does. A wild animal never plays for the other side. The wild animals are a holiday from deliberation. They are sheer life. To behold a bright being that lives without thought is, to the complex, cross-grained human mind, profoundly liberating. And even if they had no effect upon the human mind, still the wild animals are life - other life." The sheer number of squirrels in this area has clearly been altered by the presence of humans and reduction in predators. On the one hand, they are a nuisance. However, the squirrels are also little bundles of instincts and very good at it.