HUMAN. NATURE.

Hi, readers of Hannah! This is Monica Wood, nonblogging novelist and FOH (Friend of Hannah). Our mutual friend’s all upside-down over a book deadline, so this is the equivalent of giving her tea and sympathy: six days off from blogging.

I’m a nice person; ask anyone. A no-poison-in-flower-garden, recycle-cat-food-cans, save-the-marmots kinda gal.  Saw An Inconvenient Truth. Installed those curly-dealie light bulbs. Conscientious citizen of Planet Earth, blah blah blah. My sweetie just bought a new truck that runs on propane, though that was none of my doing and in fact I all but chained myself to our old truck to stop the madness.

But still. Despite the unassailable aforementioned bona fides, a melodramatic confession: I FEED WILD ANIMALS. Knowing I shouldn’t. Knowing I sin against the laws of nature—a venial sin, I hope, can’t know for sure till I face St. Peter at Gates made of responsibly cultivated pearls. For now, I do what most humans do when faced with irresistible practices they don’t preach: rationalize, rationalize, rationalize.

1.     Not ALL wild animals. Just one. At the beginning. A squirrel we’ll call Nutley.

2.     Nutley came to the porch about three days after the death of my cat, Jack, whom my other cat, Sonny, missed inconsolably. INCONSOLABLY, I tell you!

3.     Nutley became, astonishingly enough, Sonny’s friend. Ergo, HE broke the laws of nature FIRST.

4.     I had a huge jar of peanuts that I didn’t realize were unsalted (yecch) until I got them home from the supermarket.

I first espied Nutley about a month ago, after said cat death, when he skittered up the porch steps to catch stray sunflower seeds from our squirrel-proof feeder (more on squirrel-proofing in later post). Sonny also happened to be on the porch, either snoozing or in deep mourning, and moved nary a whisker when Nutley crossed his line of view. I gaped in astonishment as Nutley grazed for seed scraps (oh, how wrong and heartcrushing, such measly dross for a creature so comely and deep-eyed) in full view of the cat, who sat up, ears forward, and merely watched as Nutley took his scanty share of God’s great bounty and sauntered back down the stairs.

Huh, Sonny said. Squirrel.

That was the romantic beginning of a cross-species bromance that captured my entire being for about four days. Sonny and Nutley. Sigh.

Then: Enter Character #3. We’ll call him Frank.

Nutley wasn’t working alone.

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