It is December already and this is my first chance to get here into the squirrel woods. Frost was late this year and the leaves are dry and colorful yet still cling stubbornly in their splendor to the oak and hickory limbs.

The woods scene is blurred with fog, that wonderful, mysterious shroud. Wet leaves  crush silently underfoot as I step to the next dark tree trunk and lean against it for concealment.

Silent moments pass and suddenly the quiet is shattered by a squirrel’s raucous bark. My approach, though stealthy to the limit of my skills, has alerted him. And his bark is one of both curiosity and alarm, intended to force me to reveal myself as the danger I represent. I freeze. My intrusion has caught him on the ground to my left.

More silent moments pass as the squirrel waits to learn if his bark rousts the unseen intruder. I give him time to mistakenly conclude that my noise was from harmless feet. But, still untrusting, he dashes to a nearby slender oak, and comes into sight as he scurries up its trunk to gain an overhead view. I make out his silhouette against the gray sky as he clings to tree bark and surveys the woodland scene below.

 

The shot

 

Leaves on a dozen sprouts camouflage me well as I raise the little rifle confidently. Just as I bring the silver bead to rest on the squirrel, I give a low whistle to freeze him in place, and I press the trigger. The squirrel falls to the wet earth with a thud amid a carpet of newly fallen leaves; green ones and red ones and yellow ones atop last years brown ones. A yellow one, dislodged by the squirrel’s fall, twirls down and lands silently beside him; a hushed postscript to the incident.

I pick up his limp form and, as with every game animal I take, marvel at its splendor. The characteristic soft, gray fur and white fringed tail; the distinct demarcation line between the upper gray coat and the snow-white belly fur; accents of reddish-brown about the face and legs, placed perfectly as pastel highlights by the Divine Artist.

Perhaps because maturity as a hunter causes one to be more reflective, or maybe because after a thousand squirrels are bagged it is simply time to see the meaning, I find myself pondering for a while instead of dropping the squirrel into my game bag and moving on to find the next one. How long I have pondered, I don’t remember, but I now find myself speaking, in my mind.

I thank you, Mr. Squirrel, for your life. You gave me your tasty flesh, which I will savor and which will nourish my body. In a sense you are giving me life; your life for my life. And I honor you for doing that and much more.

“The ten acorns you ate each day will now instead give life to others of your kind, or fall to the forest floor and feed the deer or sprout giant oaks to feed the masses of the woods and sky. Let’s see, ten acorns a day for a month is 300 acorns; enough to nourish that doe deer with the late arriving twin fawns for several days. Three hundred acorns will help replace the strength drawn from her body by the nursing fawns, just enough to make the difference so she can survive the winter to bring us more fawns next year and the next.

 

Permeation                              

 

Your life, and now your death, Mr. Squirrel, have counted. As I take your succulent meat, I will leave your fur and entrails here in the woods. Other kindred animals will eat and be nourished. And the tiny, unseen ones we call microorganisms will take your every remaining cell and convert it slowly, dutifully, perfectly, to part of the soil; the humus part; the fertile part; the necessary part.

And one day a tiny acorn will fall on your converted remains; remains that will be there because you lived and died, and the acorn will sprout and form a plant. And the plant will form a giant oak with thousands of acorns, a ton of acorns throughout a lifetime, to feed unnumbered of your kind and a dozen other kinds and sprout new oak trees. You have made a difference, Mr. Squirrel. You have fulfilled your purpose in full measure. The Divine purpose.

And you have clearly shown me my role as well. For I too will soon contribute my body to the soil of the future. Like you, Brother Squirrel, I will be privileged to live in the lives of following generations. When I lay down for my last time, the microorganisms will do their work and fix my body for its new purpose. I will join you in the soil.

Together we do our little parts, our special parts, in this marvelous scheme. Together we contribute to the Divine plan. I will be there with you then, Brother Squirrel. You and I together in the end, which is the beginning for those to follow.