SQUIRREL MIGHT

     When I was in elementary school, we sometimes had tugs-of-war at recess, and I recall older kids calling out, “Pull with all your might!” They meant “might” like in human muscles and strong-mindedness, but I’ve been noticing a simpler, more commonplace example of might, right in our backyard. It’s the might, the sheer single-mindedness, of the squirrels that spring up several feet to find a footing on one of the bird feeders. They usually slip and slide and quickly crash down again, but they’re always back at it with stubbornness fairly soon. Back in 4^th grade, we pulled on the rope with all our might, but these squirrels seem to live with all their might. Whether leaping across the lawn, or scrambling for seeds that have fallen from the feeder, or dashing up the sides of trees sometimes to their very summits and then swaying with the wind, the squirrels at 44 Riverbend Drive do their living with a kind of might that might make a sometimes sluggish senior citizen envious.