Michelle So writes a bi-weekly column on campus nature and its absurdities.
There are squirrels — fattened feral squirrels — that live on Hillhouse Ave. They bark, they bore (dig), and they carry a general air of beastliness. These squirrels, they come in various shades of gray, various grades of good to poor health. I can understand their gripes. Their home (once called “the most beautiful street in America” by Charles Dickens) is now covered with an impenetrable layer of snow-ice with a texture like freezer-burned Häagen-Dazs . Living almost entirely above the canopy or below ground, their habits are nearly imperceptible.
As I passed the admissions office, two squirrels caught one another in a neat tumble. I half-expected a ball of snow to accumulate around them the way the belly of a snowman doubles with each rotation. To my disappointment, the pinwheel dance concluded with one squirrel getting distracted by a pile of various seeds and nuts and the other disappearing into a hole like a golf ball. A couple walking by pointed and smiled, and I felt a rush of warmth, familiarity, and longing. I had two thoughts: 1) Love is like a snow tunnel. 2) It would be nice to throw peanuts at squirrels with someone. We build these structures and habits up to stay warm, secure, together. Then with spring, with sun, they shy into something more solid. As two feet of snow become one, and the snug confines of winter melt into effervescent tendrils of spring.
