When I’m eating breakfast, I often get the feeling I’m being watched. Sure enough, I gaze out the window and there, sitting on the railing, is a fluffy squirrel peering at me inquisitively as if to say, “Where are the eats?”
Obediently, I rummage through the porcelain cookie jar — shaped like a squirrel — and find a handful of peanuts, then walk outside and greet the visitor with a cheery “Good morning, Mrs. Squirrel!”
Then I extend a hand containing a treat, and the animal removes it cautiously and dashes away.
Soon my favorite chipmunk — easily identifiable by a missing patch of fur above his nose — stops by.
Somewhat more nervous than the squirrel, Chippie will repeatedly zig and then zag before deciding it’s safe to remove the morsel from my hand and high-tail it to his burrow.
The squirrel was in a litter my husband and I rescued after the nest fell from a tree during a storm. At first, she’d scold us angrily when we walked by her cage, but we eventually gained her trust with — what else? — a peanut.
After we released her, she returned like clockwork to score handouts.
Taming the chipmunk took more effort, since he was wary of big, lumbering creatures known as human beings.
Each time I’d put a peanut on the porch, I’d call his name — and before long, he associated my voice with a treat. Little by little, he crept closer to me, until one day he trusted me enough to take a peanut from my hands.
In “Taming the Restless Heart,” Gerald Vann reminds us that St. Francis treated the birds and the beasts — and all beings — as his brothers and sisters.
Vann also says that if you reflect — as you stroke a cat — how good God was to make something so lithe and lovely, and place it in your care, then “the cat will remind you of God, and help you praise God too.”
The hummingbird at the feeder, the squirrel resting on the railing, the rabbit darting through the undergrowth can all lead us closer to God once we see them as his presents.
After all, a close connection has existed between humans and animals since earliest times, when Adam was entrusted with naming them.
“Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.”
Many people have advised me to get a cat or dog, but I’m quite content with my humble hamster — who relishes an occasional bit of broccoli — and my collection of outdoor creatures.
And whenever I feed these little pets, I sense God’s loving presence — and know these creatures are his daily gifts. And for now that is quite enough.
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