It is entirely another world, that of the forest
strange to us and beautiful. While we once in
primeval times formed part of that forest
we no longer are, but it draws us with its
mysterious magnetism to enter and to
indulge in its calm fastidious cycles of the
seasons, of birth and death and renewal.
From the old springs new life; yet another
seasonal catalogue of nature's boundless
formulae. And new life was encountered
on a dark, rainstruck day where the forest
interior is in perpetual dusk when a man
striding a forest trail under its canopy
encountered a precociously tiny squirrel
too soon out of the nest, determined to
befriend him, scampering boldly forward
to clamber up a pantleg, seeking comfort
from the warmth of contact on a late
August day. And nor would the creature
be convinced its inappropriate behaviour
threatened its life expectancy -- for wild
creatures are not meant to deviate from the
ancient formula that keeps them that way.
Young as the minute creature was, clearly
it was a skilled forager as its healthy pelt
testified, yet its casual shedding of the
survival instinct in favour of unlikely human
companionship a lesson in natural anomalies.
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