Like Squirrels

October 24, 2013

Like Squirrels

Take note of the squirrels to say when the real cold of winter is approaching.

"Lady, move in your herbs if you want to eat them."

Rosemary, basil and parsley came inside tonight.

They sense the temperatures dropping and start to scurry to bury their nuts before the ground becomes to hard to burrow and store their nuts. Did you know that squirrels only recover 25% of their hidden nuts? They forget where they hid the rest. They are also excellent food thieves and watch their best friend bury nuts then go and steal all of their friends nuts. Mean little critters.

The squirrels know that the cold is coming, and so do we. They save for the winter in a very smart way. This week is the first week after summer that the temperature will drop below freezing. There is a determined bite in the frosty air and a breeze is enough to send a chill through me. Last weekend we prepared ourselves for the winter, like squirrels.

The big squirrel went to Costco and loaded up on things that will hold us over for at least 2 months. He came back with meat, fish, pork chops, bottled water, oatmeal and about 5 dozen muffins and croissants....(those are my squirrel's favorite).

Breakfast

We set up a Ford assembly line with freezer bags and one squirrel packaged the muffins while the next zipped the ziplock bag and created a mountain in the freezer.

Keeping balance of the growing mountain of food in the freezer is very tricky. It takes a coordinated squirrel to manage it, preferably a squirrel with an ascendant in Virgo (nitpicky). So I carefully made the food mountain in the freezer. Muffins, croissants and bread on the right. Stack, stack stack. Fish up top. Stack. Ground beef as a base, top with flat pork chops, and crown with steak cubes. The food mountain was sturdy and secure. Only an avalanche could make it fall....then my Squirrel chef came home starving and went to begin dinner. He peaked here, peaked there and couldn't find the last piece of Italian sausage that was in the freezer. The impatient Aries was hungry and could take no more....he pulled out the entire frozen food mountain, didn't find the sausages, and stuffed all the food back....