"Several years ago, I was being paid fairly good money to sit in the park and watch squirrels". So YOUR the guy that was looking at me.
A dastardly plot, revealed!
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Dec 6, 2016
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#3
kaynight wrote:
Oh dear...Men in white coats are en route as I type this.
True, I probably should not have referred to the members of this forum as "mature, thoughtful and reasonable people". That sounds like a clear sign of mental derangement.
That's the same squirrel he was looking at.
What amazes me is that the fact that squirrel bury nuts is a revelation to the OP. Advice...turn off the devices, get out more.
i coulda helped you, blue.
although, there is a pavlovian effect if you get "involved". i feed the squirrels outside my apartment, and, occasionally, this happens.
Have you ever looked at a steep hill, covered in forest all the way to the top, and wondered: How did those trees spread uphill?
It seems to contradict logic... surely on a slope like that, the seeds would roll downhill. How could the forest have defied gravity and spread up-slope?
By chance, I was able to solve that riddle; but in the process I slowly became aware of a sinister conspiracy that underlies our peaceful ecosystem. Knowing that the members of the chess.com website are mature, thoughtful and reasonable people, I hope to alert you to the dangers.
Several years ago, I was being paid fairly good money to sit in the park and watch squirrels. Not taking notes or anything... just watching them scurry around. A pretty good job if you can get it. In fact, I was choreographing a serialized TV Cartoon show, and spent several afternoons in the park, trying to get "a feel" for how our squirrel character should move around.
I saw a squirrel look up, then dash out into the open, away from the trees. When it reached the middle of the clearing, it scanned the sky again and then hastily started digging a hole and burying nuts.
At first, I thought the squirrel was crazy... why dash out into the open and risk becoming a meal for some nasty carnivorous bird, when you could just bury the freakin' nuts right next to your tree? It seemed to make no sense, considered as an evolutionary behavioral adaptation.
I puzzled over this for some time, and finally figured it out. I had been looking at the problem on the wrong granularity level. This behavior offers no benefit to an individual squirrel... in fact, it endangers them as individuals.
But it benefits them as a species! Sooner or later, all squirrels die. When that happens, their hoard of buried nuts will be left in the ground, and if suitably located some nuts will sprout. If the stash is right next to a mature tree, the new sapling will be shaded out. It will die. Only if the squirrel has carried the nut out into the open, away from the mature trees, will the new sapling grow and extend the forest.
And that's the conspiracy! Squirrels are quietly terraforming our country into Squirrel Heaven... one tree at a time, they are insidiously spreading their influence!
WAKE UP, SHEEPLE! Squirrels are trying to take over the world! WAKE UP!