Squirrel Justice

The squirrels at our house are a constant circus act, and provide us with amusement from dawn till dusk. We pay them well by providing all the corn and seed they can eat. We throw in a few peanuts every day. Sometimes there is water in the bird bath... So they almost always have the necessities of squirrel existence. And it is worth every nickle as this feeding frenzy keeps them off of the roof, and away from the temptation of chewing their way into our house. They have, however, started on the patio furniture.

You might say we are the mesa government... and they are the poor little squirrels trying to scratch out a living, and we help them along. After all, we live well, and in fact we have all of the money... they could not go to a store, much less buy the things that we can provide for them. It is sort of a squirrel welfare program. We are that 2% at the tippy-top that can, and should, take care of their needs. And from what I can tell, we are providing about 100% of their dietary requirements. We have carefully worked out the system, so the squirrels have their own feeder, and the birds have theirs. We want to make life fair here on the mesa.

 

Of course, there are very specialized feeders for one small sub-group, the humming birds. It is true that they get special treatment. But then their food is very cheap and low maintenance compared to the rest of our freeloaders, and nobody else wants it. It's not a perfect system, but so far no complaints.

The squirrels think this arrangement is great. They are out there every day, playing their hearts out, not a care in the world... some of them actually lay in the feeder tray like epicurean Romans, scooping the grain and shoveling it in with both hands. They tag-team that feeder, and they never miss a day. And they never complain. They never question our motives, or ask for more, or suggest that we could do more for them. They are squirrels. The never get together and vote us out of office, or call us mean names. It is a fairly peaceful coexistence with mutual benefits.

I was watching them the other day and suddenly it hit me, the beauty of Squirrel Justice. They are doing better than they have ever done before, and we have a backyard full of happy, daredevil bushytails. Even if it is an absolute dictatorship.

I thought how absurd it would be, if in some crazy acceleration of squirrel evolution, kind of like Planet of the Apes, they evolved, organized, and had elections. And the only way we could get their votes, so we could continue to live there and be their rulers, was that we had to agree to their demands. And another couple, who wanted our house, began to promise the squirrels all kinds of crazy things... I don't know where I got this crazy scenario... But the election became a referendum for more feeders, more variety of seed, and truckloads of peanuts. They ordered us to replace our dangerous electrical lines with squirrel-friendly solar panels, and to dispose of the offensive daffodil plants on the deck. Also they demanded more oak trees and a 24 hour veterinarian on the premises. 

 

Now, the squirrels have never bought their first seed. They have never done anything for us. In fact, every time I walk into the back yard, they scamper away as if I am their enemy! No squirrel has ever offered me as much as a pecan pith. And they never plan to. In this imagined hell, they have decided that since we can afford it, we should have to. And do it more. And do all of these extra things. And the competing couple, they began to gain support by accusing us of being rodent haters. I swear, we never use the R word.

Funny Huh? Ridiculous, that these cute little characters, so entertaining, but underprivileged, could be so bossy. It's not like they have ever been taxed or ever will be. They have never, will never ever carry any of the burden of their welfare. They are squirrels. You don't tax squirrels.

 

But I wondered, should these dependents, who never contribute anything to the pot, have any say about what kind of seed we buy, or how much we put out each day? Should they get to vote and control us? They have a somewhat unfair advantage, since there are many more of them than there are of us. Should they be given a say about who buys the seed, or what seed they buy, or how the mesa government manages the funds appropriated for Squirrel Justice? Of course not, they are squirrels. It was a dumb thought. I don't know how that popped into my mind.

And that's the point... squirrels are delightful fur-bearing creatures, who work hard and play hard and chisel every advantage they can out of their environment... without endangering it of course, but they never have a say about where their food comes from, or how much they should get, because it's up to higher authorities, (God and His helpers) who do what is best for them. They have no expectations to get anything, because they have never really contributed to the largess which gives to them so generously. It wouldn't be right. It would be.... nuts. And as I watch them demolish the corn every day, I cannot help but believe that they are grateful, in their own squirrel way.

And then there are people. People. People are nothing like squirrels.

Regarding the Stone

Moving to Bell County, Texas had several unexpected benefits, and for me one of the most exciting was my proximity to arrowhead hunting... I'm talkin' 'bout in my own back yard!

A worn and ancient spear point, with nine chips or dents.

 I soon learned that they were there because the mesa we lived on was some kind of Native American chert projectile manufacturing site. There were not so many points as there were broken chips and chunks of “flint” rock, strewn in piles all over our property. And there were mostly large skinning tools, makeshift stone implements, and some broken points left laying around. I scoured the property and after a few weeks found a few things that satisfied my arrowhead hunting fantasies.

 A chert knife.

 Part of the process is training the eye.

 

When I flip the ancient tool, its shape suddenly pops.

A large hide scraping tool.

I found some very cool things. And I wanted to share the coolest of all- a real find, a three inch spear point. I found it one evening after considerable searching, when I had stooped over and was scanning the ground at almost ground level. I spied a fairly dusty, nondescript inch-wide nub jammed between two layers of limestone. It was probably nothing. I had pulled scores of similar bits of chert from their primeval burial nooks, just to toss them back into infinity. But when I tugged on this one, it was stuck “fast,” as they used to say, like an ancient tooth in a petrified skull. I took the challenge.

Finally it began to loosen... and as I worked it out of its eternal resting place, it just kept coming... one, two.. three inches! WOW! (See the point above in first photo.)

Almost as quickly as I loudly guffawed, I slumped in disappointment. It was broken. It was chipped- damaged, and basically worthless. I washed it up and tossed it into my “found on the home site” chert collection. Sure it was cool. But I have gotten like so many these days... an intolerant perfectionist. We shouldn't, but we value everything according to what the guys on Antique Roadshow would say. And they would look at it and say “Too bad.”

But then, months later I looked at it again. Having recovered from my disappointment, I really loooked at it. It was large for an authentic Amerind point. And even though it was damaged, it was trying to tell me a story. And when I began to ponder it, I got fascinated. Over the next few months I had several sessions, as the old spearhead and I locked horns. I studied the various chips, the dings, all nine of them, suddenly interested in how they got there. What kind of animal might inflict such damage? There was none except maybe a large wild hog, with huge tusks, that could damage a stone point that much. But they were not imported to Texas until much later when chert weaponry had become obsolete. No, this damage was done in battle.

Someone had repeatedly knocked the large spearhead away, perhaps trying to avoid having to kill the person jabbing with it. Each time they knocked it way, they inflicted serious damage to the edge of the blade. One, two, three, four- five, six times they hit it away, or blocked a jab, each time chipping the stone weapon. Seven, Eight... until both of the “arrowhead” barbs at the base had been knocked off, as well as the very tip, until the once deadly, three-inch blade was now dulled up and down, until the thing was no longer very dangerous... and perhaps in a last desperate lunge, it was impaled into the limestone bluff where it stayed for centuries.

 The angle with which it hit the limestone suggests that it was almost horizontal, probably thrust or thrown from the hip, and obviously, it missed its intended target. It appears when it was attempted to pull it out, the shaft broke off, breaking a tab on the base "tail." This was no possum hunt. 

It was no normal skirmish between opposing tribesmen. Opposing tribesmen did not have anything so effective as the long, sharp tool used to repel this spear. And no Amerind would have been so amazingly accurate while defending himself, to hit an oncoming spear point exactly with his own, so many times. Not even if his life depended on it.

There was one huge ding, a half-inch long, concave pothole in the blade which suggested something sharp and powerful. And something harder than chert. The Amerinds had few metal weapons, except copper, which was rarely used and was not hard enough to chip chert. This effective and debilitating defense was made by a sword, probably in the hands of a Spanish conquistador. This chert blade found in my back yard is the lasting evidence of a forgotten conflict where people probably died, perhaps four or five hundred years ago. And it was not any kind of routine conflict, but one between two vastly different cultures, where one would eventually destroy the other. The men of ships and iron and horses and yes, pigs, would overcome and decimate the men of stone and leather and bison.

 

And that is what this beat-up old arrowhead was trying to tell me. This spear point was driven into the caliche long before the Texans came. Long before the buffalo had been exterminated, the passenger pigeons hunted to extinction. Long before the jaguars retreated along with the Amerinds into Mexico.

And this all made sense. Our bluff, which we know today as “Crescent Mesa,” was a source of chert for tribes in eastern Texas for many millennia. No doubt Amerinds came there from all points east to extract chert and work it into transportable “blanks,” and some camped there and made weapon points and traded them. With little convenient water, none of them stayed very long. But for that reason there were probably often squabbles and skirmishes over access by competing groups to this valuable foothill to the Hill Country. If an eastern party came there to mine the chert and was repelled, it would have to travel even deeper into the hills, which was crawling with hostile tribes, and remove them farther from home and safety. So conflicts on our bluff were probably common. It had been defended many times. 

 

And the mesa and others around it would have been the front line of defense for local tribes, who felt ownership of the bluffs and their wealth of colorful chert. Whoever “owned” the chert hills was on top of the pecking order. And they would be the first people to smite, as they claimed the place the conquistadors would have gone to shut down native weapon production. Yes the Spanish supposedly came in peace and wanted to tell the Amerinds about God, but first on the agenda would have been to try to disarm the population. And that might have been the kind of conflict illustrated by my battered flint projectile; the loser in a historic clash of uncompromising cultures.

Well, now you might understand why a normal, pristine Native American point no longer holds any mystery or much value for me. It is like an unissued military artifact. No story. No action.

Give me a relic with some character. A story to tell. The mystery. There's the value.