All summer long, I’d watched the sunflowers grow. When they finally blossomed, what joy to see their happy faces! But one day, I returned home to find one of the sunflowers decapitated. It’s stem was a thick twig, no longer able to smile at the sun. The head was laying atop the porch railing, demolished of its seeds.
The next day, I found the culprit.
A fox squirrel. She was a red-head, with thick haunches and a particularly fluffy tail. I watched with mortification turned fascination as she systematically decapitated a sunflower, dragged its head to the porch railing beneath the window, and then- surprise beyond surprise- she laid down on her belly with her hind legs dangling off the sides, and joyfully buried her face in the sunflower!
This goofy chunk of a squirrel had won my heart.
By the end of the week, the sunflowers were all twigs. But I had made a new friend.
Rachel G. Jordan | Christian Marine Biologist 