Lessons from a squirrel?

Squirrels are just small rodents to some folks, but to admirers they are high flying acrobats, fuzzy-tailed philosophers, scampering tree huggers and resourceful survivors. (They are also rather cute!)

Here are 4 (+1 extra!) life lessons we can learn from our squirrel friends.

1. We all know this easy one: save for the future.

2. They adapt and adjust, individually and collectively. Those 285 species of squirrels live in habitats ranging from South America’s tropical forests to Africa’s semiarid deserts (as well as your backyard).

• They can handle life even upside down.
• They are flexible and can reach for that limb that at first looks impossible.
• They learn to have back up plans, to have more than one escape route. They even build more than one nest so if a predator or the weather tears down one nest, they have a back up.

3. They are good stewards of our earth. Did you know they help continue the life cycle of a forest by eating a great many things (bark, plants, insects, nuts, leaves, roots, and seeds) that help the forest environment. They help replant the forest when they are not able to relocate those seeds and nuts that they hid.

4. They teach us to pace our lives, to live in the rhythm of the seasons.

During spring they normally get up near sunrise to get food, build their nests and raise their young.

During summer months most begin to slow down and take a siesta in the afternoon, then return to getting food and playing.

And during winter they usually get up near sunrise, work until noon time and spend the rest of the day resting and conserving heat.

And for the +1 extra…here’s something I didn’t know and maybe you didn’t either!

Scientists from University of California Berkeley created a study to figure out how they accomplished the life-sustaining feat of gathering enough nuts to last through the winter, including the improbable act of finding each tiny hoard weeks after it was created.

What they discovered was pretty impressive. The squirrels used “chunking.” Chunking refers to the practice of sorting information into similar, easily remembered groupings.

Those 45 squirrels put the goodies into species-specific groupings: almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, and walnuts.

Just like when we learn a new phone number, we don’t memorize an ininterrupted series of 10 numbers. We learn the three-digit area code, the three-digit exchange and then the last four digits

Who knew? Not me!

So… are you strong? are you intelligent? are you adaptable?

Can YOU pick out a personal life lesson from these examples?

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