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 Sea Lion

A sea lion on a sun-drenched day, bouncing gently on a small ice floe, was mesmerized by the horizon line, bobbing up and down and far away. He thought a single Great White Cloud, in sea lion’s shape and all aglow, was God, and he was God and God was he. Up and down the ice raft bobbed, he on top, in rhythmic trance, under blazing sky, feeling One-in-all and All-in-one, identity and unity.

When evening came and it grew dark, he slipped into the frothing sea and was eaten by a Great White Shark.

            

Moral: So much for that unified feeling. When all is said and all is done, the All may not feel one with you.

Two Pandas

Xien Won was a giant panda born with a normal, playful, good disposition in the Guiyang compound where she lived. Fresh, in fine spirits, she was positively delightful and cuddlesome, according to standard propaganda until—she wasn’t. Why was that? It was the place. She came more and more to scorn her condition. She grew bored with the monotonous gym set and routine, even gave up swinging on the swing. She came to despise the ooh-ing children and their ah-ing parents, and regularly faced about, turning her back to the crowd (to be rid of them, she thought). In these ways her disposition soured; she was out of humor, she lacked even momentary joy, and gradually her features more or less caught her sulky mood, and her face, though furred, seemed to glower.

           

She refused, of course, to couple with prospective mates, with whom, instead of love-and-hate, it was always hate. After a third and successful artificial insemination, she gave birth to a cub of her own to whom she was so indifferent that it had to be taken from her and put into incubation. She never missed it just as she had never kissed it. Her progressive withdrawal became deeper. She ended as a sullen ward, neither close to fellow creatures nor the staff, bonded to no one, anti-social and glum.

The Genealogical Conversation

“The thing is,” said the crocodile, “I look old—wouldn’t you say? Absolutely dinosauric: the lizardy corruscaded hide, the mindless devouring slithering predatory machine, slit-eyed, cold blooded, everybody’s idea of basic prehistoric ancient primary essence.”

            

“I am the model for all that,” said the shark, “millions of years before the likes of you, before even flowering began on earth. I’m not even bone but primeval cartilage, the reigning monster of the deeps.”

            

“You protoplasmic peasant,” said the Emperor crab, “you’re completely un-regal and inconsequent, next to me. Did you catch my name, you late-coming hulk? Learn what antique royal lineage really is.”

           

“What is all this hydrostatic priority?” asked the ant. “We are the teeming lords of the realm, for eons and eons and in continual hordes.”

            

“My,” said the bacterium, “such interspecial virulence! I’m counting on it to bring down your resistance. All of you together make me laugh. Fact is, we—” he was sub-dividing as he spoke—“in time have laid low everyone. We were here first, numerously, and we will be the last.”

            

Moral: Geneology—it’s not history, it’s bragging rights.