Starting Off As A Gripe About The Weather, Then Moving On To Squirrels

[poliphilo]

The essential February day- cold, damp, lightless. The rain has only ever been a degree or two away from becoming sleet- or even snow.

We had Julia plant bulbs outside the dining room window. This morning I found several of them on the surface. What animal had done that? A squirrel probably. Anyway I reburied them

Talking about squirrels, I moved the bird feeder so it would be out of range of their nearest launch pad. They remained stymied for a few weeks but then some Napoleonic bundle of  grey fur eyed up the problem, calculated a trajectory and leapt the gap- and once a thing has been done it becomes easy, doesn't it? You've got to admire squirrels: they're constantly pushing the envelope. If humans as a species possessed the squirrel's perseverance and enormous physical courage we'd have landed the first men on the Moon in the 1500s. 

Comments

[matrixmann]

With humans it works half-way this way when they're young.
When they have limited fears of anything in the reality and when their brain is pretty dynamic in acquiring new things.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, we're at our bravest when we're young. It's then that we've the least to lose.

[matrixmann]

Not only that, I also mean that in that way: If you're young, the tendency of your cells in your brain are much more likelier to link than if you're older. If you're in your 20s, it still is quite good, but comparing both, you already notice a difference yourself in having gotten "too lame" in learning. If you're in your fourties, even if you want to learn something, it's already much harder than in your 20s.

[topum.livejournal.com]

If we can put enough bird feeders there, perhaps the squirrels might even beat us at colonising it. I mean the Moon.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

They should have given Armstrong and Aldrin a bird feeder to plant next to that anomalously rippling flag.

[seaslug-of-doom.livejournal.com]

"If humans as a species possessed the squirrel's perseverance and enormous physical courage we'd have landed the first men on the Moon in the 1500s."

Well, no, probably not, because if we were more like squirrels we never would have domesticated dogs. They'd still be chasing us up trees to this day.