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Why Squirrels Always Win The time has come again to think about putting up a bird feeder, one of those inexpensive, suction cup feeders that sticks to the window. In years past I had virtually given up on any kind of feeder at all because the squirrels always found a way to get into them and to tip them over. Once I even made one out of copper pipe which was screwed into a flange on the back porch railing and loomed out high over the back yard at a right angle like a great boom off of a large sail boat. Along the top pipe I had placed four coffee cans, one in front of the other so that would spin and knock off any unwelcome critters that attempted to scamper over them to get into the feeder. It only took a matter of days before the squirrels figured out how to hop over the cans and hang upside down to get at the bird seed. This battle went on for nearly two years until I exhausted my hopeless repertoire of ideas, endured the commentaries from my amused neighbors and finally took the whole thing down and threw it out. Last week those nasty little rodents had won, again. This new window feeder was well off the ground at least 10 feet and for a few weeks it attracted cardinals, chickadees, finches and other beautiful birds that had never had the chance before then to dine anywhere in my back yard. A few days later I looked out and there was a big fat squirrel sitting in the little feeder which he dislodged from the window when I banged on the glass. I cannot remember being so angry. I am supposed to be an intelligent human being one of the same species who has mastered cyberspace and flown to the moon and back and invented hula hoops but in my own backyard I've been outsmarted by a dumb little rat with a bushy tail who found a way to get what he wanted even when there was no obvious route for that persistent little beast to follow! In a final moment of absolute frustration I scrounged around the cellar one more time and came up with an old full length mirror and leaned it horizontally against the foundation of the house. For several weeks the squirrel, coming face to face with it's own image, was a joy to behold, its own furry image terrorized it beyond belief! But he tried again and again until and finally figured out that it was his face that he was looking at and I had failed for the last time. The feeders came down for good. As I stewed over my latest failure, to just feed the birds and nothing more, I realized that what was happening was a lesson in pure survival, in winning and nothing more than that. I had what the squirrel needed to live and nothing would stop him from finding a way to get it. We too, like the squirrel, are the winners of this era, the dominant species, however unlike the single minded mission of that little squirrel, or no matter how complex our definition of winning becomes, we share a common instinct, to do what we must to stay alive. But, for us contrary to the simple life and the mission of the squirrel... that process of our survival, has become far more complex. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines winning as "progress by struggle, to be the victor. " This past week I took an inventory of sorts and made a note of all the convoluted ways we do struggle to win, with the tenacity of the squirrel as my guideline I asked in what human pursuits do we display the same determination? I guess first of all we are creatures of convenience, focused upon finding ways to save time, to put out less energy doing ordinary things in order to make our existence less stressful. For example there are the hundreds of gadgets that we use everyday. Lets take a simple example, how about the radio.
Have you ever tried to figure out how to change the station on a car radio that has no less than 10 buttons to push. I asked for a "simple" one in my car and I still have not figured out how to program the stations. The author, Richard Wolkomir wrote of his similar experience in an article I found in a back issue of The Smithsonian Magazine. He confessed to what he called "a nutty urge to press a button labeled 'ECT-POWER' on his car radio, just to see what would happen. As far as he could tell nothing happened." His 5 page owners manual was of little help and it required a doctorate in obscure abbreviations just to decode the labeling on the buttons! He asked why are these things so befuddling and finally consulted Don Norman a pioneer in the movement to make things easier to read and to understand. Norman revealed that we are 'victims of our own same, in other words if you cant figure out your own radio than were no not so bright after all so no one admits to it. Norman also volunteered "that the engineer who founded Digital Equipment Corporation once confessed that he couldn't figure out how to heat coffee in a microwave oven!" The list of these cryptic little gadgets is endless and most of them never existed when we were kids. Have you ever tried to connect a simple VCR? How about a child's toy? Ever try to assemble a red flyer wagon, or read the instructions to a gas barbecue or even ( curse of curses) try to program an auto dial phone? The phone that can remember 25 numbers but you only have 10 seconds to punch them all in and push the right buttons before the memory, forgets? By the time I'd programmed in all the numbers correctly I could have made all the calls I needed to manually. There may be some merit in the time saving potential of these things should us everyday folk ever figure out how they really can work the way they are supposed to without consuming all of our time. But the clincher is many of these devices do save time, allowing or expecting us to do twice as much in one day. I tried to think of one item in existence today that has completely remained unchanged or unimproved in the last 10 years, that did not require a training process to re think how to use them. Toothpicks were a good possibility until I discovered a battery operated one. Even children's play sand for the sandbox is now marked "new and improved!" God help us all when "the robotic smart house" of the year 2,010 comes into being, for I fear that its operations manual will take the rest of our lives to read, never mind to understand. The lowly squirrels have none of these distracting concerns, leaving them with a very clear mission unclouded by the creation of new and improved squirrel toys. We seem to have a propensity for complicating the simplest things in our lives under the guise of progress, success and convenience. We also have developed a need to own as many of them as possible. In human society, we gauge winning by the number of toys we have, regardless of how much time and money it takes to acquire them and learn to use them. To survive the gizmo's and gadgets that are intended to help us ain't easy these days! There are times when I long for a day where absolutely nothing is "new and improved," doesn’t cost a fortune, or require a manual that is to big to read or a technician to interpret it, or expect from me the same misplaced determination as shown by the hungry squirrel to make it work. Technology has shown its blessings and for many it has made life easier. No matter how hard we try to avoid the inevitable, the mission that we share with the squirrel overturning my feeder is that we both survive by the same instinct, to find any means possible to live. How we design our existence and what we deem as important is a choice for us. Not so for the squirrel. There is, however, a time when we need to be caught up short and startled by the mirror image of our own reflection. And a time to regain a bit of that single minded focus that defines what it really is we need to survive as individuals and as a congregation. I had dreams once, and I still do, of a simple cabin in the woods that was my very own; to commune with nature, to kayak and fish and soak up the beauty of the land and the water. I could smell the barbecue cooking and hear the children playing in the water. I dreamed of a Christmas eve in a tiny church in the woods, filled with candles, snow on the ground and the music that moves me to tears. When I spent some time alone in a yurt in the woods with all those things around me for the taking, I realized that without a community of others to share the beauty of my adventure with, my dream was meaningless. An anonymous author once said," Give me a time and a place on this earth and I will show you when the self imposed struggle among all intelligent people becomes too much to bear." Be it through sophistication, intelligence or by pure instinct, we are the only species that understands what quality of life means. When our quest ceases to allow for that option we are no more intelligent than the squirrel who always wins at my feeder. His objective is instinctive, competitive and unconcerned with the needs of his fellow squirrels. He has one mission…to eat. His technique is impeccable, but with one major flaw. Once he leaves the feeder, victorious as usual, one only need to count the number of dead squirrels lying in the road to realize that true winners need to be mindful of where they are headed as, the end results can be dangerously similar for us, lest we become lost in the throes of progress and loose sight of where the road is really leading us. So be it Amen
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