fox squirrel harvesting

fox squirrel harvesting

red viburnum berries -- 
grasp, nip, nibble, stuff

Cold, rainy days, familiar November weather. Too dreary for a walk, so I head to the indoor pool for a mile of laps. As often happens when I'm destination-bound, I literally get flagged down by Beauty, which stops me in my headlong rush. This time it's a fox squirrel in a viburnum tree right outside the Aquatic Center, stuffing her cheeks with red berries. 
          I approach slowly, expecting her to scamper away, or at least flick her tail and chitter her annoyance at my intrusion on her space. But even when I'm standing almost directly under her, she continues to feed, moving from branch to branch to snatch a cluster of berries and nibble until her cheeks are full.
          While I'm engrossed in trying to keep the squirrel in focus with my telephoto as she moves about, I notice a person approaching and he's not headed for the door. Go away! I think in his direction. You'll scare off my squirrel! But he either doesn't hear or ignores my silent admonition, for he walks right up to me and plucks me on the sleeve. This startles me out of my fixation with the squirrel, so I turn my eyes away from the viewfinder to see a plump man with a round face, red cheeks and a wispy white beard, like Santa Claus in bib overalls.
          "That's a pretty red sweater," he says.
          "Thanks," I say, smiling because he's been flagged down by my bright red sweater in the same way that I got stopped by the squirrel eating red berries.
          "What are you looking at?" he asks.
          "A squirrel," I reply, pointing to the squirrel, which still seems oblivious to our presence.
          "Pretty," he says, and walks away.
          The squirrel continues gorging. She must know that the berries are to be eaten at once rather than buried in the ground like nuts or stashed in a tree to dry like mushrooms. The squirrel is inadvertently performing a valuable service for the viburnum, when the seeds inside the berries pass through her digestive system intact and are deposited in another location. Squirrels also fill this delivery service when they forget where they've buried some nuts, which then sprout in the spring far from the parent tree, as well as when the spores of the dried mushrooms they've stored in treetops float down to begin life in new territory. In this magical way, trees help animals and animals help trees.