Friends,

In the wake (sorry) of my tribute to Dave, your kindness has been piling up all around me. But this is the cool thing about love: you can’t spend it down, because the more of it you put out, the more is created. And we all know what the world needs now. It’s a new year; maybe, together, we can change a few things around here. Thank you for every word. Thank you all.

And now back to our regularly scheduled stuff & nonsense:

 

In the wintertime, when the trees are bare, you really notice the squirrel nests. They’re a disgrace. They’re a derelict association of dead leaves with no obvious integrity. The winds are blowing hard and they have been for months. There’s no reason those suckers should be intact.

But they are. They’re still there. It makes no sense.

You can understand that sort of persistence in a hummingbird nest. Lady hummingbirds make a nest of lichens, spider butt juice, and cussedness, and it’s so sturdy you could set it as a solitaire in an engagement ring and it would outlast the average marriage.

The squirrel nest looks like the tree hawked up a big old leaf loogey that didn’t quite clear its branches.

I suppose squirrels are cute, if you squint, or you’re a child, or a foreigner from a rodent-free land. I’m not a fan. Squirrels will eat your solar panels, chew wiring, and dismantle fuel lines in your car. They routinely disembowel the tough outdoor seat cushions, and when you try to slice them up for the garbage can—the seat cushions, not the squirrels, settle down—your box cutters can’t get through them. But those big fancy rats can, no problem. You know how you have to microwave a butternut squash for three minutes just to begin to get the peel off? Squirrels chomp right through. One chomp per squash, just to be dicks about it.

Oh, it’s possible to think of the little assholes as cute, and they would be if the scenery were not slathered in squirrels, but it am. The ubiquity of squirrels counts against them, in my opinion. And there’s no end to the ubiquity. They are up there in those disreputable nests just pumping out new ones all year, and when they’re not, they’re thinking about it. The nests are officially called “dreys,” which is one letter off from dregs.

So I looked it up. And sure enough, they’re more elaborate than they look. They start with an actual scaffolding of twigs, a bit of architecture that isn’t evident from down below. They’re always built way up high, and we only see them from the bottom, and you may be forgiven for assuming they are just huge crappy cup nests, because that’s what I thought too until I looked it up.

But they’re not. They’re a big constructed nearly-waterproof hollow ball of woven leafy twigs with a door at the bottom near the tree trunk. They’re all fortified with leaf-mâché, and cozy with moss and grass and shredded bark and related items, according to the experts. The experts are covering their asses with the “related items” bullshit. They just are. This is what they mean: inside the nest, there’s a home office, integrated smart home technology, and in-floor heating. The shell is fortified by packed electrical wiring, fuel lines, and purloined seat cushion fluff. The domicile is further strengthened and shaped from the inside by packs upon packs of tiny rodents being raised and trained to harvest their own wiring and fuel lines and fluff. And so it goes, on and on.

Talk about sustainable living.