Confuse-A-Squirrel
Yesterday at the park, I was in standing meditation posture (feet shoulder width apart, knees bent and pointing over the toes, sacrum straight, suspended from the head top) under a large tree. A squirrel was in the tree and decided he wanted down. When they're uneasy, squirrels do this sort of head-bobbing dance, trying to decide if what they're looking at is a threat. Well, I wasn't moving, so he decided it was safe and shimmied down the tree trunk. I didn't mind, until he started moving directly towards me. I don't know if he was curious or thought I was a tree, or what, but I didn't particularly want him trying to climb up my legs. So I said "Hello." I still hadn't moved, but my voice was enough to stop him and get the head-bobbing going again. He sort of backed away towards the tree and climbed up it slowly, still keeping an eye on me. Then he disappeared into the upper branches. I presume he crossed over to another tree and climbed down elsewhere.
I had a similar experience in seated meditation, probably last summer. This time the squirrel climbed down the tree, head bobbing all the way, then, uh, crossed the space between that tree and another. I swear, it looked like the scene in Emperor's New Groove where Kronk is taking the llama/emperor to throw him in the river and is trying to be "inconspicuous." Okay, the squirrel wasn't humming its own theme song, but the head-bobbing and pausing and occasional chattering... It was funny, but I knew if I laughed, I'd scare it into scampering away.
6 comments:
If I don't hum my theme music, who will?
Ummm... depends on how much you can afford to pay! ;^D
I have a squirrel in my backyard who comes and visits some mornings while I drink my coffee on my deck. While he has never comes within arms length of me he does appear to not to be very worried about our sharing of the backyard. Steve the Squirrel raids my wife's birdfeeders and I have noticed him several times watching me as I enjoy the morning calm and he was having his breakfast. Many times I would have liked to tell him that my grandfather and one of his closes friends, both children of the Depression, would have made a lunch of him had he ventured into their backyards back then. But Steve is far too good of a buddy for me to even to begin to worry him about things that happened over 60 years ago. I hope one day he will become use to me enough that he does join me at the picnic table as I drink my coffee.
We have squirrels a-plenty in our backyard, and in all my years encountering them, I have never seen this head-bobbing you speak of, although their tails often twitch, especially when taunting my cat. (: Usually, they hold perfectly still at any noise or movement, with the occasional exclusion of their tails.
(Yes, another squirrel comment.)There once was a young squirrel in our neighborhood that had either impaired senses or lethal curiosity. It literally ran over my dad's foot once and on more than one other occasion came up to my dad or I for very close inspections. Foolish little guy. Either curiosity killed him, or he learned a lesson, because he was only around for about two months.
The only times I've seen the head-bobbing, I've been sitting/standing quietly for several minutes. I think the squirrel recognizes "human" but also knows that unmoving things are usually safe. So it's not quite sure that it's safe, and does the head-bob. *shrugs*
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