We were quite sad when the huge tree just outside my office fell in a storm. It was there the previous evening when we left, and it was on the ground the next morning. The green foliage used to be very soothing to the eyes, and the shade it afforded made use of blinds on the windows quite unnecessary. It took me a couple of days to get the sadness out of my system. But that was not the end of it. I opened the third window of my office which I normally kept closed for keeping dust away from my computer. I almost jumped out of my skin because there lay something that I could not have imagined ever could exist. There was a squirrel on the window ledge, packed on all sides with cotton. It did not run away because it was dead. After looking at it for some time, I realized it had been killed by the impact of a branch of the tree when it fell three days ago. The lethal branch was next to it. The cotton all around it was remarkably like that used in our adjacent ward. I thought some more about how it had landed up all around the squirrel, and then the truth him me. The squirrel’s mate had seen it was dead, and somehow refusing to accept it, it had stolen cotton from the adjacent ward and put it all around its mate, probably hoping to make it comfortable and hopefully cure it. The poor thing had not known that hospital cotton could not revive dead squirrels. Even our medicines could not have revived it, even if the mate had managed to get some. I had not realized till then how much animals love their mates, and nursing sick ones is not the monopoly of only the human beings, but animals are also good at it.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Squirrel in Love
We were quite sad when the huge tree just outside my office fell in a storm. It was there the previous evening when we left, and it was on the ground the next morning. The green foliage used to be very soothing to the eyes, and the shade it afforded made use of blinds on the windows quite unnecessary. It took me a couple of days to get the sadness out of my system. But that was not the end of it. I opened the third window of my office which I normally kept closed for keeping dust away from my computer. I almost jumped out of my skin because there lay something that I could not have imagined ever could exist. There was a squirrel on the window ledge, packed on all sides with cotton. It did not run away because it was dead. After looking at it for some time, I realized it had been killed by the impact of a branch of the tree when it fell three days ago. The lethal branch was next to it. The cotton all around it was remarkably like that used in our adjacent ward. I thought some more about how it had landed up all around the squirrel, and then the truth him me. The squirrel’s mate had seen it was dead, and somehow refusing to accept it, it had stolen cotton from the adjacent ward and put it all around its mate, probably hoping to make it comfortable and hopefully cure it. The poor thing had not known that hospital cotton could not revive dead squirrels. Even our medicines could not have revived it, even if the mate had managed to get some. I had not realized till then how much animals love their mates, and nursing sick ones is not the monopoly of only the human beings, but animals are also good at it.
