Cared for, respected and loved!

I hear the rustle outside our front door. She is back! Again! She must have heard us when we came into the house through our back door, even though it is far from her nest. It seems like she somehow just “knows” that we are home.

I glance up at the door and sure enough, there she is clinging to the screen, all four feet like suction cups poking through the tiny squares of our front door window screen. She chatters and “pounds” on the screen until we open the door.

We have named her “Bezastite,” Latvian for “no tail.” The name suits her because instead of a normal bushy tail, she sports a tiny stub of what was once there. Although hardly original, for us a dear and affectionate name. If she could talk, she would probably tell us what happened, but alas, our limited communication skills at least on our end relegate her story to guess work.

It all started one day when she showed up on the sidewalk in front of our house. She just sat there staring at us. We spoke to her and tossed her a peanut or two. She grabbed them with her paws and deftly cracked and ate them as we watched. When she finished, she chattered a bit, and turning her tail-less backside scrambled up the bark of a nearby tree. From that first encounter it became a daily ritual. If we did not respond quickly enough to her chatter she would jump up on the screen and pound her paws until we showed up with her dinner.

Our daughters were young then and would sit on the front steps, and when “No tail” came they would feed her holding the peanuts in their tiny hands. When the girls would reach out to pet her, she agreed, in fact welcoming the human touch as if she was a seasoned family pet. Once in a while “No tail” would bring a fury friend, but none of them ever came closer than allowing for us to toss the peanuts from a safe distance.

I wonder what caused her to bond with us? Why did she, a wild animal trust us? was she not afraid, as all the others are? I do know this; we can take no credit for this wonderful thing. We did not encourage or train her. We were simply there when she sensed we could help her somehow.

She took the initiative, she came to us, she decided and controlled the terms of engagement. I think it happened because of her own loss. She was incomplete, and somewhere in her animal psyche she understood that. Without a tail she could not maneuver with the skill of a full-tailed squirrel. She could not easily negotiate telephone wires or keep her balance while flying from branch to branch in our urban forest. She made up for these losses by taking the first step to cross over the invisible barrier between animal and human, wild and domesticated.

And I would like to think that somewhere in her animal brain and spirit, she understood that this family of humans young and old were safe to be with. Perhaps in that unspoken silent language of the heart – she, and we connected. All, sentient beings want fundamentally the same thing. To live. To experience pleasure and joy. To be valued and accepted. To feel safe. To be loved. To be remembered.

If we are honest, we will admit that we too have a missing something. If not a tail, then a broken dream, a shattered relationship, or a deep disappointment, and just like our, Bezastite, we need a little help once in a while to get by.

Even a squirrel without a tail can understand that.