For quite a while, Pinecone seemed perfectly content to experience the yard alone. There were other squirrels around, of course, but Pinecone was the one I noticed, the little squirrel who learned the maple tree, investigated the feeders, stole what wasn’t intended for them, and became another familiar face outside the patio. Somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing simply a squirrel and started looking for Pinecone.
Today, Pinecone brought a friend. Or perhaps the friend has been here all along and I am only now learning to notice them together. They chased each other through the branches, disappeared around opposite sides of the trunk, and performed those wonderfully impossible squirrel maneuvers where gravity apparently becomes more of a suggestion than a rule. There was something joyful about watching them play in a tree that has quietly become part of their world.
And then, after all this time, they finally discovered the feeder. The feeder with the squirrel food. The feeder I put there specifically for squirrels.
Apparently, this required extensive independent research before either of them was willing to acknowledge that I might actually know what squirrels eat.
For weeks, Pinecone has investigated the bird feeders, sampled whatever could be stolen, climbed around the maple and generally ignored the perfectly reasonable offering placed within easy reach. I had even started wondering whether the squirrel feeder itself was somehow the problem. Today, Pinecone sat right on the platform, food held between those tiny paws, as though this had been the arrangement all along.
But what made me smile wasn’t really the feeder. It was the two of them.
There is something different about watching an animal you have come to recognize suddenly appear as part of a relationship. Pinecone wasn’t simply visiting the yard today. Pinecone was playing, chasing, eating and sharing this little corner of the world with someone else.
I don’t know anything about the relationship between these two squirrels. I don’t know whether they are related, whether they regularly travel together, or whether today’s play was simply one afternoon between two squirrels whose paths happened to overlap. I don’t need to turn what I witnessed into something I cannot actually know.
It was enough to see that Pinecone’s world is larger than the small part of it I usually get to witness.
That may be one of the quiet gifts of paying attention. We begin by noticing individuals—the lone goose, the heron in the tree, the squirrel stealing from the feeder, and eventually we start noticing the relationships around them. We realize that while we have been watching their lives, they have continued having entire lives beyond our view.
Maybe that is true of most things we care about. We only ever get pieces of one another’s stories. A visit to the feeder. A chase through the branches. A few minutes spent sitting together before someone disappears around the other side of the tree.
Today, I happened to be sitting here when Pinecone brought a friend. And after weeks of ignoring the food I specifically bought for them, they finally discovered the squirrel feeder too. Some discoveries, apparently, are better made together.
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