Chapter 1: the Perils of Stanley the Squirrel
Driving around the Seattle area of Washington state offers a variety of experiences. Among the many varieties is the sharp contrasts between fully developed suburban housing areas with its row upon row of family homes. Just across the highway sits a beautiful and lush forest areas. The further you travel away from downtown Seattle on one of the many multiple lane freeways the more likely you are to encounter a significant difference in how the land is used
Imagine this; you’re traveling on a six-lane freeway with cars and trucks all around you, a quick look at your speedometer finds you going more than 70 miles an hour, the radio is tuned to your favorite station. You momentarily look to the left, catching a glimpse at the row upon row of homes leading out from downtown Seattle. Just across the freeway it looks like you have stepped into the past. There you see a vast view of heavily forested hills with not a home in sight.
If you take time to pull into one of the many housing developments you’d find rows of comfortable middle-class homes, all crammed onto their own small lot. In what seems to be a pleasant suburb with families, children, bicycles and the like it is what you won’t see is the homestead of an extended family of other animals. These little critters have resided in and around the stand of trees they call home well before the arrival of people, freeways and houses.
Nature’s population in this development includes three generations of squirrels. As it is in many families there is that one family member who is the stand-out. In the squirrel family, that would be two-year-old Stanley. Always curious and daring, Stanley also has a deep yet unidentified longing to be somewhere else. As always, anyone looking for Stanley usually finds him daydreaming about the forest land just across the freeway.
To the human residents of the housing development, owning a home where the untouched beauty of nature can be seen by simply looking out a window is an added bonus in their lives. To hear them talk, they are the direct recipients of what they call progress or as some would say, God’s blessing. Indeed, they are living the American dream.
Stanley, his immediate family, along with the rest of nature’s family disagree with this view held by so many human residents. Yes, members of nature’s world do discuss just how much things have changed since the takeover of land by the humans.
Seldom does anyone say much about the it, other than it serves as a constant reminder of how things were at one time, a time not so long ago. There are two reasons that nature’s family works at keeping those memories alive. One is an openly practiced tradition of maintaining a verbal history of their origin. The second reason is more unconscious. It is a genetic trait passed on throughout time thru their DNA. While this trait is not recognized, it is present, imprinted in their brain.
These memories serve all of nature’s family as a significant driving force in their lives. Major memories that define them and their relationship with all that is around them. Their very way of life is linked to that forest. If you were to ask any of the residents of the animal world about their preferences, they would tell you that they’d much rather be living back in their natural habitat. But, oh well, that’s not about to happen anytime soon. Or is it?
