For a long time now I have wanted a pet. But for various reasons cats and dogs have been vetoed, despite begging and cajoling on my part. So we finally settled on an alternative family pet: a squirrel! This frisky little guy resides in our backyard tree and scurries around the yard. Lincoln yelps, "Dee! Dee!" when he spots our furry friend, so we named his as such. He is a bold little feller too--scampering up to the porch, even perching right outside the sliding glass door and peering in at us (perhaps because we have never tried scaring him off). We've spotted Dee scrambling in and out of the compost, where he will clutch a grapefruit rind all the way to a flower pot--a sort of dinner table for him--and feast like a king. Dee does appears chunkier than other squirrels around, so he obviously dines well on our leftovers. Are we simply encouraging an unwanted rodent, you may well wonder? It reminds me of something Brigham Young said about grasshoppers (remember the seagull story?): "Last season when the grasshoppers came on my crops, I said, ‘Nibble away, I may as well feed you as to have my neighbors do it; I have sown plenty, and you have not raised any yourselves.’ And when the harvest came you would not have known that there had been a grasshopper there. . . Pay attention to what the Lord requires of you and let the balance go” (3:159:55). And “according to present appearances, next year [1868] we may expect grasshoppers to eat up nearly all our crops. But if we have provisions enough to last us another year, we can say to the grasshoppers—these creatures of God—you are welcome. I have never had a feeling to drive them from one plant in my garden; but I look upon them as the armies of the Lord” (12:121:67). I guess a dog or cat can wait.
