Do They Really Eat Acorns?
It's that time of year when there's nothing better than sitting inside and looking out at the ice and snow and watching the birds at the feeder. The Christmas rush is almost over as well as the bulk of deer season. Between the kids and myself, we were able to put a couple of deer in the freezer. I still have a buck and a doe tag for the late muzzleloader season and I'm excited to get to try out the new flintlock that my father-in-law built for me. I still have glass to make and lots and lots of other things to do, but for now at least, taking a little time to watch the birds in the morning is medicine for the soul.
I like sitting here in the morning with my cup of coffee, watching the sun rise and the first birds come to the feeder. Our dog Koda usually sits or lays beside me hoping that I scratch her ears or rub her belly. Or better yet, that a squirrel shows up on the feeder. She knows I will crack open the sliding glass door and say “go get em”. Those suckers sure do eat up the birdseed, and so I try to put out enough to go around! The other day she ran four squirrels up the same tree at the same time.
What's up with those squirrels anyway? Do they even eat acorns? They've been packing away the acorns all fall, burying them here and there. We had a bumper crop of acorns this year and so I'm thinking that they don't need our sunflower seeds. But then again, I’m doubtful if they remember where they buried the acorns.
According to Google, they can remember the location of up to 10,000 nuts. I'm a little skeptical. If a family of squirrels each buried 10,000 nuts in an acre of ground, finding one later wouldn't be that difficult. I'd say it's more luck than anything. They probably plant more trees in their frantic harvest than they store acorns for the winter. And maybe that's what they were meant to do. I'm always amazed at the order and intricate design in nature and the things we see when we look close.
As human beings, I would wager that we are more like squirrels than we think. We run around trying hard to make a living and to save for the future. Sometimes it works out and other times what we worked hard for gets sucked up by an unexpected bill or it just seems to disappear, swallowed up by the demands of life. That's usually when we recognize that God has been taking care of us all along, and that there's a lot more to life than getting rich.
Having our own little business that is busiest at Christmas, it's pretty easy to relate to the squirrels. Over half of our income comes in the last three months of the year. The first three months of the new year are pretty much “slim pickings”. We're never sure if we saved enough and so we're constantly running through the snow trying to pick up a morsel here or there just in case. As we scurry around, I'm hoping that one day we'll be able to look back and see things growing from the seeds that we've been accidentally planting along the way. We've been meeting so many neat people and building friendships and hopefully encouraging them in their walks of life. It kinda feels like that's what we were meant to do. And we've been discovering that there's a lot more to life than food and clothing. Like those squirrels on the feeder, I'm sure glad that our heavenly Father takes care of us and there's always enough to go around!
I can hardly remember what I ate for supper last night, but I'm pretty sure that it wasn't acorns.
