This morning as I was taking the dogs out, there was a squirrel, one squirrel, rattling around on our clematis trellis. No big deal. I heard a strange noise close by, and looked across the alley to see the neighbor's oak tree trunk virtually covered with squirrels. I have never seen so many squirrels in such a concentrated area, ever. There must have been over one to two dozen squirrels chasing each other around the tree trunk, and there were other squirrels running down the alley. Imagine Hitchcock's "The Birds" with the bush-tailed rodent instead. It freaked me a bit. It was not a cute squirrel munching a peanut on your steps anymore, or even one squirrel deviously digging up your tulip bulb. It was a squirrel mob.

It was evocative of memories of tent caterpillars as a kid. You'd find one caterpillar, which for a bug-loving kid was rather cool. It was soft, although not furry, and colored brown and blue with intricate body patterning like some exotic fabric. It was very "friendly" and never bit. You'd find a couple more and put them in a jar. But then you'd discover the motherload...the 'pillar hive. It was a web in tree branches, crawling with 'pillars, catching 'pillar residue like 'pillar poop and the occasional dead 'pillar.

After that, those caterpillars were no longer that cute and lovable. It was no longer that lone gem, semi-anthropormorphised in your young mind that you found happily chewing on a leaf. It was part of a colony of destructive robotic clones.

I had an experience like that several years ago. We found some small caterpillars alongside the Monarch caterpillars we would raise. Unlike the Monarchs which exist independently of eachother (Eggs are laid singly, usually one per leaf), these caterpillars seemed to act like one organism, all raising their bodies in unison when "it" felt threatened. It gave me one big freakout, and although we were attempting to raise them too, we aborted that mission. These caterpillars of the Tussock moth are destructive defoliators. We drowned them. I felt guilty about that, but maybe we saved a tree. It was that unitary organism response that the Tussock moth caterpillars had that was a red flag to me that they were up to no good.

As I watched the squirrel spectacle this morning, it got me thinking that concentrated colonies of animals, be they caterpillars, birds, squirrels, maggots, mice or whatever, elicit the "huzzzzzzz" freakout response from most humans, whereas one of those--with the exception of the maggot-- might even elicit a "cute!" response. We are hardwired to be repulsed by groupings.

But why should our own kind not elicit the same response? I know in my case it does. I see a large gathering of people and I know I don't want to go there. I am drawn to quiet, human-less places. I do like big cities, but only for the architecture, not for the large population. When I used to go to parties, I'd opt to be alone with my friends in a room away from others. I shop at Shopko now because it's always empty instead of Target which has quadrupled its customer base within the last two years, even though I prefer Target's offerings. I never go to malls, except for one that has a bead store, and that mall is not very busy, and I head directly to the bead store (or the restroom if need be) and then immediately leave after beads are purchased, not wander around the rest of the place. I won't go to the Boerner gardens in Milwaukee anymore not just because they charge too much and they took away any food source, but because of the constant stream of obnoxious wedding parties. I don't go to theatres or arenas or fests (unless forced to by people you're visiting) or events. I really don't like concentrated humanity. Remember when humans started flying in planes and all the cliches about how they looked like ants from above? Why would you want to be among a bunch of ants? Don't hives freak you out?

I'll leave with something I said a few years ago which is Stan's favorite quote of mine:

"We're going where? Down there? Where all those people are?"

Labels: This Boring Life