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Our neighborhood has a fair number of squirrels.
They race across rooftops and clambor up the trunks of trees.
One squirrel looked like a break-dancer hurtling through the back yard.
He raced up a tree trunk, flipped over backwards, and dropped to the compost pile.
He sifted through the compost, throwing around bits of soil and leaves.
I wondered if the caffeine was getting to him.
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A Little Squirrely
By Helen Kelley
Our neighborhood has a fair number of squirrels racing across rooftops and clambering up the trunk of our great black walnut tree behind our house. Actually, that tree was planted by one of their ancestors many years ago when an itinerant squirrel broke into our garage and stole nuts from a sack that my father-in-law had brought us as a gift. The creature planted one neatly in our garden, and it sprouted and grew.
When the tree was fairly new, the neighborhood squirrels would dash up the trunk, gambol through the branches, and bite off the young nuts. Then they raced down again to retrieve them and bury them in the lawn. Since the nuts rarely had a chance to mature on the tree, I bought Bill one of those water cannon toys. When I spotted an errant squirrel heading for the tree, I would shout and Bill would race out the back door with his water gun. The squirrels laughed at us, and we had great fun. Now that the tree is older, the nuts are so plentiful in the fall that we can gather baskets full of them and still share some with the animals.
This morning I watched a remarkable display out of my workroom window. There was a squirrel who looked like a break-dancer hurtling himself through the back garden. He raced up the tree trunk out onto a sprig about three feet from the ground and flipped over backwards as it bent under his weight. He dropped to the compost pile and waltzed through the finely sifted rich material, dipping into it here and there, throwing up bits of soil and leaves. Since a high percentage of the compost content is coffee grounds, I wondered if the caffeine was getting to him.
Up in the tree he went again, flipping off the twig, and over and on and on with his dance without a moment's pause. I was fascinated.
As I watched, I had a sudden revelation: I saw myself. I dance too. I had
been making my breakfast when a burst of inspiration flashed through my head. I saw a vision of my next quilt. I set down my cereal bowl, threw open my fabric cupboard doors, and began sifting through the reds and roses piled inside. I pulled out all sorts of possibilities. I stacked them on the floor. I fingered through blues and greens. I spilled more on the floor. I shuffled through them. I laid out paper and pencil and sketched. I pulled books off my shelf and hunted for appropriate pictures in my big file drawer. Then back to the fabric piles I went. I was excited.
This happens to me frequently. When my mind seizes an idea, I am overcome with such fervor that Bill hides upstairs in his office. To put it quite simply, I get excited about quilts. When inspiration hits, I abandon ordinary things and become lost in the creation of my dream. What looks to others like frantic activity and fancy footwork is actually merely the manifestation of all that excitement.
Do you suppose that I look like that excited, crazy squirrel to the uninitiated person, the nonquilter? Would the average self-controlled, rational human being, who has no idea of the pure joy of inventing a quilt, see my activities as madness? Would that person think I had lost all common sense and equilibrium? Or would this sane and sensible person think I had gone nuts?
©HK 2005
Helen Kelley is a quiltmaker, lecturer, author, and teacher from Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can visit Helen on the Internet at her website www.helenkelley-patchworks.com or email Helen at this address: helen@helenkelley-patchworks.com.
Helen's book Every Quilt Tells a Story: A Quilter's Stash of Wit and Wisdom is a collection of two decades of Loose Threads. Now in its second printing, the book is available at quilt shops, bookstores, or from us at www.VillageQuiltShoppe.
View our archive of Loose Threads columns.
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