‘When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.’ – D.H. Lawrence
The knocking came at a most inopportune moment of the year. In the dark night of fall, a few weeks prior to Halloween, when spirits seek to gain entrance to our world and senses are heightened in expectation of paranormal activity, it sounded above the bedroom ceiling. A loud knock, followed in quick succession by smaller, diminishing knocks, paused me in my descent into slumber. It was enough to plant a seed of worry in my head, and I waited for another sound to tell me something was indeed happening, or a tense silence to allow me to believe it wasn’t. Another loud knock came, then the pitter-patter of little feet on the roof, and the realization and resolution of the quick mystery dawned on me to welcome relief: squirrels in the oak above our house.
Squirrels – those gray ghosts of our backyard, acorn-thieving marauders that pelt our roof with the discarded debris of their handiwork – have been making a fine party for themselves in these high days of autumn. Lying in bed at night, I can hear their paws scurrying over the roof in between the knocks and pings of acorns dislodged from the oak tree above our house. At first it was disconcerting – the notion of small creatures traversing the house in the middle of the night is not initially a comforting one. Upon realizing what it was, and always having a soft spot for squirrels, I now welcome the disturbance. It’s a little reminder that lives other than ours are taking place in close proximity, that we are not the only ones here, and that the others may even be higher than us. Seeking and storing their food stocks, they are doing what they need to do to survive another winter, adding on a little layer of sustenance that will perhaps see them through to the spring. What a perilous life, and if a few spooky knocks at night are the cost, I will happily pay.
Leave it to a squirrel to shatter the glass bottle of our ego.
