Day 81

Red squirrels are beautiful little creatures. We have several of these quick intelligent small beings in our vicinity.  They are very fast and very bold, and have to fend off the larger grey squirrels which they do with great gusto and inventiveness, twisting and turning around tree-trunks when they are being chased, leading the grey ones on a merry dance.  Our red squirrels sit and scold me from a high branch if I disturb them in their seed-collecting at the bird-feeder.  They have chirrupy high voices like birds.  In America, red squirrels are sometimes called chickarees or fairydiddles, which is the most wonderful word.

American red squirrel with adopted baby

They have an interesting social life too, because they are intensely territorial, but territory can be bequeathed by the mothers, who will "make room" for a daughter to live nearby, which seems like a rather matriarchal society.  The females mate with many males too, which is very unusual in the animal kingdom, where often it is males that mate with many females.  The strangest thing they have been observed doing, in a 20-year study, is to adopt the babies of relatives.  If a mother squirrel notices that one of her aunts or sisters have died, she will adopt one of the babies.  This is known in evolutionary circles as 'Hamilton's law" which explains the reasons for altruism as being beneficial to the altruistic person or creature's genetic continuity. 

And red squirrels love mushrooms, even eating those that are poisonous to humans.  And some they pick and dry on branches for later consumption, or because they taste better. 

The first private screening of a motion picture took place on this day in 1895, a 47-second film by the Lumière brothers, of workers coming out of the gate of the Lumière factory.  Even though people loved the few films after this one, the Lumière brothers never believed that moving pictures would become so popular.  They made three versions of the same scene, with women workers in their bonnets and long skirts, and a dog running about barking.  In one there is a cart-horse and in another there are two horses pulling a cart.  This was how they distinguished the differences: one-horse, two-horses, no-horse.

We went to see a movie tonight called The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson.  Nick, who is a film student, loves his movies and has twenty reasons why he is a brilliant director, but I have never enjoyed his work, finding it shallow and passionless.  However, I LOVED this movie. 

a scene from the film

It was like a very beautiful little fairytale, with monstrous villains, pretty pure-hearted girls, and two interesting main characters.  I loved his use of the square screen for part of the movie, which Nick tells me is because of the actual film on which it was shot.  I loved how the violence, which is quite unusual for Anderson, is muted, how the central character is so honourable in his own way, and how the entire fantastical tale is wrapped up like one of the delicate confections from the Mendl bakery.

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Bravo Wes Anderson!

I will continue with this subject tomorrow, because it is a broad topic, and because I am very tired right now.