Two Squirrels

Twice upon one time, there were two squirrels in the same wood, one of them in perpetual harvesting motion, wise and industrious, gleaning seeds and bugs and litter and nuts, while the other did not, enjoying instead the one season of good weather. Each of them indulged his situation, the one in fretful, even desperate endeavor, busy-busy to-and-fro-ing, the other in timely and sensible pleasure. (You think you know where this is going?”)

            

What a heaped-up harvest the good squirrel made, while the prodigal lay back on piney boughs in the shade of upper branches for noon nap breaks from his escapades. There were moments when the stirring one, worn to a frazzle, envied the other but could not condone either the laziness or fits of razzle dazzle. He collected mushrooms and dried them neatly on covert twigs, then stored them out of reach. The profligate ate a fading peach, not feeling the need of conscientious greed. He scampered and played all over the place, especially on one high tension cable, running back and forth in a daring race to improve his speeds (how his cousin yearned to follow his lead!) going faster and faster just to be able to better the records that he had made.

            

The hard-working cousin filled many caches with morels and nuts and assorted grubs, all against imminent winter, while the frolicker believed there’d always be provender, if only in left-over cones and nubs, and he continued his spectacular high-flown dashes, summer and fall, without misgivings for the future at all, the playboy of the Rocky Mountains, aerial cavalier who winked away fears of on-coming winter.

            

But winter came on, bitter cold, glitter icy. Pine cones froze stiff on crystal boughs or were buried under drifts of high-piled snow. The dutiful one was doing nicely, but the wastrel was wasting, desperate to plunder, hell-bent to forage. But there was, of course, not a pittance to be found in trees or on ground, wherever he scampered. His front teeth had grown over-long, his mouth was sizing up, he was starving both for food and courage. Now, as his life was ending, when there was not even an occasional antler bone, he was prepared to die—but alone, apart from others, from all the precepts and clichés hurled down from heights: “You should have been (yes) squirreling things away” against a rainy or freezing day. Or: “Those who romp and play will pay today for yesterday.” And the worst of slogans—“The more you shirk the more you’ll work”—would be truer than the rest.

            

And, then, what could be dumber than stumbling just at that time on his cousin’s storehouse, lying in secret ground, so many treasures cleverly covered by molted feathers of native jackdaws with him unable to eat a single nub or nut, since he couldn’t open his sealed locked jaws. He reeled and whirled a final spin and expired on the spot, as much from chagrin as not.

            

And the sensible one? He was racing across that same high wire his cousin had used, feeling safe, Spring-exultant, healthy, exuberant, vindicant, doing what, at last, he truly and enviously wanted—making new records, becoming legend, lore, before a fantasied audience stirred up to applause. But, stepping on frayed winter-worn insulation with dew-wet paws, he went into instant and terminal shock, and fell straight down, dead as a rock.

            

Moral: The worst thing about traitorous Fate, in its many and inspired distributions, the thing, deep down, that we really hate—is our own contribution.