The world is full of tiny, wonder-full moments, but we’re mostly too busy to notice them happening right in front of us. Today I got lucky, simply by being in the right place at the right time.
I, and another animal, tweaked the twilight zone.
I had finished my morning garden chores and was moving toward the garage to put away my pail and pruners, when a black squirrel’s bounce caught my eye as I glanced toward the folly, converted recently into our new open porch. With his incisors firmly grasping a large green tennis ball-sized walnut he boinged up the brick walk toward the deck of the structure. After hopping up onto the platform, though, he stopped dead. Another nutted squirrel was right there, captured in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. Here-squirrel and there-squirrel froze. At the garage’s arched doorway I froze too, held my breath, and watched.
For perhaps a half-minute, here-squirrel stared, unmoving, at his reflection. Then, tentatively, he and he moved, a step at a time, closer…closer. Mouths chock full of nuts they reached out their right paws, and, in perfect synchrony-slowly, slowly touched.
But not…
Ten long seconds passed. Then, squirrel- and Other- gently patted the mirror, trying to process this strangeness. I saw a focused intensity there, and bafflement; he was here, and so was this other squirrel, plus that bonus nut. Right here. So close.
But not…
He smelled just himself. And yet, they were touching. Sort of…
He and his reflective self put down their nuts, placed both paws on the glass and peered into the gleaming surface. Noses touched. Those squirrelly eyes never blinked.
Another few ticks of time passed.
Finally, here-squirrel picked up his nut, and turned to leave. Other copied. Both looked back, noted this, thought for a few seconds, flicked tails, and hopped off the porch at an angle. But then, here-squirrel turned and, still carrying the nut, rose high enough to place both forepaws up on the platform to take a last, mystified look, from a distance. He was now positioned not to see anything reflected back. So, to him, Other, along with his unfathomable, flowery world, had vanished.
The last bit of this story is also intriguing: here-squirrel dropped to all fours and looked down at the ground thoughtfully, for about 4 seconds. Then he left, doing what I can only describe as a slow, measured four-footed walk through the foliage, thinking, I think.
I came back a few minutes later to find a large nut placed up against the mirror, exactly at the ‘event horizon.’
My mischievous inner voice whispered, “Whose nut?”
A spider lowered itself down, down the silken thread he’d made, descending in front of the mirror. Did he perceive the other spider, inches away? Did he?
The world is crammed with micro-amazements like these. When I slow down and look, there they are. Witnessing them always shifts me, just a bit. I become a little less smug about my personhood, and a lot more aware of how tiny we all are, in the Great Scheme of Things.
Do other creatures possess a sense of wonder? Do they wrestle with mysteries? Is that what I saw?