Life lessons come from the strangest of places.  Things I think I should have learned from study and discussion must be discerned from the animals on the porch.  And, their diets.

But, here I go again, cart before horse, expecting the reader to know what I’m talking about.  Let me start again.

On a recent morning, I sat in my easy chair with a cup of coffee.  As I often do, I stared (most likely, a blank stare; mornings are like that), looking at nothing and everything outside my window.

With a start, I became aware that a large rodent had jumped onto the ramp leading to my front door.  A handsome little beast, she sat and flipped her tail a few times, as if to warn interlopers away.  She was carrying something in her teeth.  A big something.

Well, big for a squirrel.  Protruding from her mouth were four pecans, all attached to each other, still encased in their protective covering.  As I watched, the beautiful creature turned the cluster in her mouth, crunching down on the hull of a single nut and detaching the pecan inside, said pecan looking much like the ones we purchase in their shell at the grocery store.  She then jumped onto the ground under the ramp, rapidly digging a hole with her little hand-shaped paws and dropping the pecan into it.

Food for the future.  Their Creator made the little rodents intelligent enough to plan for the cold of winter when no fruit or nuts will be found except by foraging on the ground.  And that’s a hard row to hoe, as the red-headed lady who raised me would have said.

Well, that’s not so unusual, one might think.

And, one would be right.  Not unusual at all.  Until they consider that there is no pecan tree in my yard.

The Lovely Lady and I went on an exploratory trek last week.  I had seen evidence of the pecans in the yard and wondered where they were coming from.  As we walked, we found a large pecan tree at the edge of a clearing about two blocks away from our home.  Exploring further, we located another large one in the vacant lot behind our house, probably 200 feet from where my new friend was burying hers in hopes of a meal, come winter.

Her actions aren’t all that odd.  Except, many experts say that gray squirrels usually don’t travel more than that distance away from their home in any one day to find food.  They can travel several miles but don’t under normal circumstances.  As evidenced by the many pecan hulls scattered around my yard, this one is making the trip multiple times a day right now.

Adding to my confusion, many of the pecan hulls I’ve found are at the base of a beautiful, healthy black walnut tree right outside my back door.  Squirrels love black walnuts!  And, the tree is covered—absolutely covered—in nuts this fall!

Besides that, only ten or fifteen feet away from the black walnut tree is a chestnut tree.  I’ll admit, I don’t understand how the squirrels can stand to chew through the spiny hull of the chestnut, but always in recent years, I’ve found myriad pieces of the outer coverings from the prickly nuts in my yard.

And, while the little gray creature sat on her haunches and chewed through the hulls, I chewed mentally on the question that formed in my mind.

She has walnuts and chestnuts, along with acorns from the pin oak in the front yard, aplenty.  Why would she brave the space between my yard and the big pecan tree?  Every step away from her home is fraught with fear and very real dangers.

It didn’t take long.  As Mr. Tolkien would say, even I can see through a brick wall in time.

The light above my head flickered to life.

She likes pecans better than any of the other, more easily acquired, options!  She loves them enough that she’ll bypass the easy pickings of the huge oak, to say nothing of the black walnuts that have already fallen, with many more awaiting the next strong wind to liberate them from the limbs high above the ground where they hang expectantly.

She will travel the equivalent of miles for a human to reach the food she loves.

It’s easy to see where this is heading, isn’t it?

A friend told us the other day he had it on good authority that there are 68 places along the highway going through our little town where we humans may stop and get a meal.  Sixty-eight!  I’m not sure I can come up with that many.  But, I know it is a sizable number.

Still, every day, hundreds of residents from this town head for other municipalities, sometimes as far as eighty miles away, to do nothing more than eat food.

We want what we want.  And, we’ll subject ourselves to danger, expense, and inconvenience to get it when we want it.

I do it too, occasionally.

I almost hesitate to keep going down this road I’ve begun to traverse.  Someone will say I’ve begun to meddle.  Perhaps I have.

Why, when we’re so finicky about the food we put in our mouths and bellies, are we so lax about the garbage we put into our minds and hearts?

Daily, we sit and peruse social sites, news outlets, and entertainment sources, allowing the gossip, the lies, and the filth to permeate our very souls.  Easy pickings, the red-headed lady who…well, you get the idea. 

No effort required.  Right there at our fingertips.  A touch on the screen and we devour whatever comes to our eyes.  And ears.

We—the very same connoisseurs—who eschew the everyday fare in our local cafes and restaurants, will shovel in this garbage in ever-increasing quantities.  Without more than a perfunctory thought to truth and morality—and yes—to purity, we swallow what the world around us offers.

Yes.  I know.  Meddling. 

I’m climbing down off of the soapbox now.  Carefully, so I don’t break anything.

I have just this one parting thought. 

My admiration of the beautiful squirrel aside, it’s time to begin choosing carefully. 

There are better things.

Better.

Jeremiah could tell you.  No, not the bullfrog.  The prophet who cried also knew what was good for him.

And, for us.

When I discovered your words, I devoured them.
They are my joy and my heart’s delight,
for I bear your name,
O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies.
(Jeremiah 15:16, NLT)

Time for a change in diet.

I bet it’ll be worth the journey.

Oh!  I’m with the squirrel, too.  Pecans are better than black walnuts.  Any day.

Thy word have I hid in my heart
        That I might not sin against Thee.
(Psalm 119:11, KJV)

You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jellybeans.
(Ronald Reagan)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2023. All Rights Reserved.