Humans settle in, or not, for an indefinite torture of staying home with all our germs so as not to sicken others in our communities. We do it to take care of the healthcare workers who take care of covid-19 patients, endangering their own lives in the process. We’ve slowed down everything in our modern, urban lives. Not so many cars on the roads. Many businesses are closed. Everyone is online, including the kids who are trying to go to school in their computers.
Still, there is one restaurant open. It’s in my front yard where a half-dozen squirrels congregate every morning for coffee and migas. This is Austin. The squirrels prefer migas for breakfast. In the afternoon, they order up sesame salads and iced tea, unsweetened.
On Saturday mornings Sun Radio has a dance party and I dance around my living room to great music. Some squirrels watch me for a while through the glass front door, munching acorns, as they peer into the house with a “what the hell is that?” expression. They’re figuring it out. In fact they know me well enough that they are completely comfortable to sit on the porch, two feet away from the door, to survey the neighborhood while dining. One day I opened the front door to find a squirrel sitting on the other side of the glass door, having its migas. It tossed its head upward in greeting and kept eating.
Okay, so I made up the part about the greeting. And the migas. But, it did calmly sit there until it finished its acorn, with no concern for what I was doing.
For a moment, I think the Peaceable Kingdom is possible.
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