Off The Cuff

The Squirrel Race

Posted by: From Arkansas in Fun things, Humor on Aug 25 2008

Welcome back!

Normally, you would be seeing me talking about health care, politics or some other concern for the day, week or pocketbook. I did say normally. Today is not normal in any sense of the word. However, I will not go into my frustrations with you. I think you might have had enough of those for the moment anyway. I know I have had it. No, I want to talk about something that has been ongoing for some time now. We have lived in the current house for 6 and a half years. And we have noticed this one thing going on the whole time. What, you say? Squirrels.

Out in our front yard, there are three trees. In the neighbor’s yard there are several more. I have not actually taken the time to count them. It does not matter to the story. Two of the trees, one in our yard, one in theirs, are very close together meaning the branches are reaching out to each other. Kinda cute. I have never measured the gap but it is about 10 ft. or slightly more. Looking at it from my position on the couch, I am not that good of a judge of distance but that was my estimate.

The first time I noticed this event, we had been living here about 5 or 6 months having moved in in Dec. It was then summer. With all the leaves on the trees, it took me a while to get what was going. I would catch movement out of the corner of my eye. By the time I could focus on the tree, it was swaying but nothing else was going on. I could not see a reason for the movement. There was no wind, not a clue about it. One day, I was looking for a bird that was making some really strange sounds when I spotted two squirrels running through the trees up and down the trunks, running out onto the limbs and jumping a couple of feet to another limb. The first was running from the second. Looked sort of like a squirrel version of tag.

Then, for whatever reason that moved them, they headed to the end of the limb that was reaching out to the other limb on the neighbor’s tree limb. Squirrel number one took a long run and then…jumped the whole distance to the other tree. I thought I was watching Rocky the flying Squirrel. It would have been but the second one followed the first. And the race was on again. Over the years, I have watched what is likely to be the same two squirrels running that same race. Uh, I should mention that they do not care which tree they’re in. They jump in both directions. They even look like they might miss occasionally but they do not.

Why was I bringing this up now? Well first, because I am home bound and have time to watch such things. My position on the couch is to be lying down and looking out the window. I do this most of the day. Today, we had the doors and windows open for some fresh air. Wow! I love it. The squirrel twins decided to add more to their race or possibly I am only now noticing that they had already added the new track. Now, they run toward the house, jump on it, run around the roof and jump back onto the tree. At that point, someone decides to head to the jumping trees again and there they go!!! Now that’s entertainment.

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