National Squirrel Awareness Month

Eastern Grey Squirrel, melanistic form
William Sutherland, Wikimedia Commons

It's a little hard not to be aware of these critters this time of year since they're all scurrying around storing food for the winter. They can be pesky at times, but  always full of charm. Sarah Jessica Parker noted,"A squirrel is just a rat with a cuter outfit!" Ralph Waldo Emerson, however, had a more poetic observation,"A squirrel leaping from bough to bough and making the Wood but one wide tree for his pleasure, fills the eye not less than a lion, --is beautiful, self-sufficing, and stands then and there for nature."
Today, October 4, is also the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi; it is fitting that his reflections on nature also included the squirrel: "I once spoke to my friend, an old squirrel, about the sacraments - he got so excited and ran into a hollow in his tree and came back holding some acorns, an owl feather and a ribbon he found. And I just smiled and said, ''Yes, dear, you understand everything imparts His grace.'"



Eastern Grey Squirrel, standard form
photo by Diliff, Wikimedia Commons