30

Home so late last night that I gave myself a break and slept in on my day off.  Walked a bit along the beach this afternoon, thinking what a cold bed the Canada geese were sleeping on in the river.  But I suppose they come from Canada, so they don't mind a bit of ice.

This morning a Blue jay sat in the rhododendron for ages, just checking things out, and a squirrel came and grabbed a branch and began to eat it.  At first I thought it was taking leaves for its drey, but it really looked as though it was sitting there munching away.  I had no idea squirrels ate rhododendrons.

When we lived in Winthrop I was sitting on the deck one day watching a fat carpenter bee flying in her wonderful physics-defying way, no doubt checking out the old boards to see if she could see a good place to bring out her tools and carve out her T-shaped nest. I knew it was a female because she had a black face, and only females work. (Carpenter bees and bumble bees don't actually defy the laws of physics.  When they calculated this myth, they used the example of an aeroplane, which has stiff rigid wings.  Clearly a carpenter bee has both flexible wings and body, and if it actually defied the laws of physics there would be all kinds of scientists working on this problem.)  Suddenly, quick as a very fast shadow, a squirrel leaped up on to the deck and snatched the ill-fated carpenter bee out of the air, put her in his mouth, and munched greedily, then gave my astonished face a quick look of satisfaction and left as abruptly as he had arrived.   

My mother had a pet squirrel when my dad met her, which apparently bit him!  Squirrels are super-intelligent, defying people's attempts to keep them off bird-feeders, working out strategies like famous chess-players, always one or two steps ahead of the human.  I'm not sure why they are sweeter than rats, because they are very similar, but I do like them much more than I like rats.
They are quick, sweet-faced acrobats.

We were camping in Maine once, walking through an old forest, when we noticed squirrels squabbling overhead, in the canopy, about 30 meters up.  Without warning, one came plummeting through the air and landed with a hard thump on the ground just in front of Nick.  We all thought it was dead and stood there staring at it for about a minute, until life slowly and unexpectedly materialized in the little body, and the feet got themselves together and all the important parts which make up an animal rearranged themselves until it was a fully functioning squirrel again, which wandered off looking just a little dazed, but terribly lucky. 

The second piece I would choose for my Desert Island Discs, is Clair de Lune, by Debussy.  This piece is still my nemesis, but I love to hear it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ip64cG7gK4  There is something about Debussy that I just can't get yet, the cross-rhythms, although this piece is still my ultimate goal.