Acorns and Thoughts

After a long day spent indoors, at dusk I waited for a bus. The ground around me is cluttered with countless acorns. As I pace up and down, from the corner of my eye I catch a slight movement. A little guy, a teeny tiny squirrel if you please, is scampering about. He grabs one of the acorns. Then he notices me inch toward him as I try to capture him on my camera phone. As I struggle to figure out the zoom on this excuse of a camera, he throws quick glances to his left and right. Drops the acorn and runs for the bushes he'd emerged from. It was an unsuccessful attempt at the photographing, but this little incident took me back in time. Back to the days when I held the world in wonder. When acorn-collecting squirrels belonged in cartoons, books and in the land far far away. Now I am in that land far far away. Now I realise the beauty of mother nature. How the shedding of acorns is timed aptly with pre-hibernation. It's perfect how just as the squirrels get ready to fill their holes for winter, the trees drop the food they require. A cynic may view this as 'survival of the fittest' or something equally practical. They'd say, those that can collect and store this food will survive the winter. Those that choose to stock up a little too late, or opted to hibernate earlier may not survive the throes of winter. I for now, will reject the cynic's opinion, and look around at the ground carpeted with acorns and wonder: "How do these acorns disappear after a while?" "Do the squirrels collect all of them?" "Is it cleared due to human interference?" How big, infact, are the holes the squirrel will reside in for the next few months?". As I walk around looking for these holes in the trees, my bus rolls by, and for now my thoughts must pause...

-written in Fall 2008