Dialectics

These past few weeks, in my class, I've been discussing dialectics, or the combination of theses and antitheses into a synthesis that includes both instead of eternally pitting the ones against the others. This, for instance, is part of the philosophical framework you find in Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima, a canonical book in U.S. Latin@ literature that is always a good read, and which students tend to love.

Today, as I watch two adolescent squirrels messily eat the bird seed on the window sill and on the window feeder, they remind me of the dialectical nature of life and death. Where there is one, there is the other, and what we ultimately have is a recursive combination -- not an opposition -- of both.

Whereas I usually would rap on the glass and open the back door to warn the squirrels before I let the dogs out to chase them into the woods (which they love to do although I make sure to give the squirrels plenty of forewarning so there's no chance the dogs can actually catch one), I'm letting them eat to their heart's content today.

That's because a little while ago, I saw two dead baby squirrels at the foot of one of the tall trees I pass during my evening walking route. Yesterday, when I had almost finished the dog's last walk, I noticed one of the tiny baby squirrels haltingly coming down the tree, and then stumbling awkwardly across the road.

I was sure the baby squirrel would get run over by a car or eaten by a predator, so I called my husband and asked him what I could do. He suggested that I should try to get it closer to the tree, which would give it a chance to reunite with the mommy squirrel in the nest.

I brought the dogs back to the apartment, armed myself with towel paper (I didn't want to leave any scent on the baby squirrel and I didn't want to handle it with my bare hands), and I went back to the spot where I'd last seen it. There, to my dismay, I discovered that there were not one, but two baby squirrels intent on leaving the nest for God knows what stupid purpose, and there was no sign of an adult squirrel anywhere near.

I found the first one I had seen already across the road, trying to nestle against a beer can under a pile of leaves, and I picked him up (he had a very obvious pipicito) and set him at the bottom of the tree, where he promptly started climbing quite adeptly. The other one was trying to come down the tree, and when the owner of the house where the tree is located came out, she told me that they'd seen that other baby squirrel in their front yard earlier that afternoon.

When I left, the one I'd rescued from the woods was well on his way up the tree, and the other had gotten itself turned around and seemed to be climbing upwards, too. I prayed that they would be alright, and left without being able to do anything else.

This morning, after I'd given the dogs a long walk, and walked to and back from the tiny village to have breakfast with a student, I decided (against my better judgment) to stop by the tree to check on the two baby squirrels. At first I was heartened because I didn't see anything on the ground, and I didn't hear any of the high-pitched distressed sounds they had made yesterday.

But I was soon slapped by reality (as it is wont to do), and my heart broke when I discovered that one of them had obviously fallen from the tree and died of the fall, while the other had died overnight in the cold. If there had been any sign of life in that one, I would have brought it back here to do God knows what with it, but I wouldn't have left it out there again. But he wasn't breathing and there was no other sign of life, which was as heartbreaking as heartbreak can get.

My husband says I did all I could, which might be true. Today I found a website on rescuing fallen baby tree squirrels. I'll do more research and see if there's a place nearby that I could actually take a fallen baby squirrel, if another one should cross my path.

While spring is a happy time in terms of how it teems with life, it's also sad because a lot of that life is clueless and doesn't last very long.

In the meantime, I have to remind myself of what I teach my students about dialectics, and about how two seeming oppositions are basically inseparable and part of the same thing. For those two baby squirrels who so sadly died last night, I have these two pesky adolescent squirrels (perhaps last spring's brood?), who are still small and nimble enough to wreak havoc with my miniature window feeder.

When my husband comes up this weekend we're going to bury the dead baby squirrels, if they're still there. I guess the good thing about Nature is that all goes back to the same place it came from.

But I'd like to think that there's a Baby Squirrel Heaven where those too little starcrossed explorers will go back to feeling warm and fed and protected. I'd like to think so.