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ball bearings of the forest
Thursday, November 15 2001
My parents' old dog Fred lives in a big insulated doghouse, the Fredquarters, which I built him from spare Shaque materials back in 1990. Fred is a hardy outdoor dog and, though you wouldn't know it by looking at him, he's a capable squirrel hound. Over the course of several squirrel generations, he's eliminated the tardy, stupid, and daring from Muellers' Mountain in Virginia. Sally, meanwhile, is a lithe, agile dog who sleeps beside me every night. But she's an outdoor dog in her heart and after being indoors for four or more hours, she becomes agitated and starts pacing the floor, playing with her toys, yawning, licking me, and attempting to clamber into my lap. She grows especially annoying as darkness descends; she seems to remember that there are no squirrels after dark.
Squirrels seem to be much more abundant in Prospect Park on warm days. I usually turn Sally loose at the end of the Vale of Cashmere's woods nearest Grand Army Plaza and if it's a warm day there's usually four or five squirrels dealing with their acorns right there on the ground. She's a fast dog, but Sally has never once caught any of them. She can outdistance a squirrel on the ground, but the only time she ever came into physical contact with one, it had foolishly made a run for a tree that was a little too far away. Still, it managed to get away. In considering the advantages squirrels may or may not have in escaping dilettante squirrel hounds in the woods of Brooklyn, it occurred to me that the food that brings the squirrels in the first place, acorns, also serve as ball bearings in many places. In some parts of the forest, they are so thick on the ground that it might be difficult for Sally to find her purchase.
Meanwhile, back in the brownstone, the cats often complain about the lack of food in their dishes. It's not that there isn't any food, mind you, but all that remains are incomplete pieces of cat food. I can always tell how desperately hungry the cats are by the size of the crumbs in their bowls. To listen to them complain, they'd have to be trapped for a month in a void of a collapsed office building before they'd deign to eat anything smaller than am intact piece of catfood. This morning, though, I got a sense of their desperation. They'd actually eaten well into their crumbs.
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