Day Dream with a Squirrel

"In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams.  But in waking life, too,

we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness,

especially when under the influence of repressed or

other unconscious complexes."

C.G. Jung

Problems of Modern Psychotherapy

(1929)

 In the early morning, coffee cup in hand, I wandered out onto the back deck.  As I was sitting down appreciating the beautiful day presented before me, I noticed a squirrel hanging over our gutter looking down at me.  I am not a huge fan of squirrels.  I have nothing against them, but they are not my favorite as I find them to be annoying.  This may be based on an earlier experience:

I came home from work to go to bed with an out of control migraine.  I no sooner crawled into bed, when I heard a squirrel prancing around on our roof.  The noise that followed cannot be put into words, but the squirrel's actions can.  The squirrel fell down our capped fireplace chimney which happened to be metal lined.  So his claws screeched on the metal all of the way down as he made a god awful noise not endearing to my migraine.  Luckily, the glass doors were closed so when I pulled my body out of bed, my head throbbing, I could watch this small animal run around in circles safely behind glass doors.

I could tell you that the story ends here, but it doesn't.  I wanted this squirrel out of my house and out of my house now.  I called the Humane Society and 'instructed' them to come immediately.  They told me kindly that they only rescued dogs or cats.  Oh!  Did I say squirrel?  Perhaps it was a cat.  They arrived within 15 minutes.

In the meantime, I placed an ironing board, a foot rest, and a collapsible clothes rack to form a path for the squirrel to depart with grace.  I talked to the squirrel, yes, I did.  I told the frightened animal that he would be out momentarily if he would just calm down and cooperate.  I extended light to him to help him relax and not feel as though he was in harms way.  I sensed, however, he knew I was ready to do him harm.

The Humane Society gentleman arrived in his truck bearing nets and all kinds of rescue things.  He came into the house saying, "Now when I open these glass doors, I want you to be standing right here."  Oh no, all I could think of was that Chevy Chase movie with some animal hanging down his face.  I politely, okay maybe not so politely,  explained to him that he was the trained professional and I was a by stander.    Remarkably, things went well.  He opened the glass doors and pulled the screen carefully back.  The squirrel hopped out, followed my make shift path and ran out the door.  The kind animal rescuer  looked at me and said, "Boy that cat sure looked like a squirrel!"  Funny man.  I promptly returned to bed with an extra dose of medication.

But I digress.  Today's morning squirrel was simply hanging off the gutter wondering what I was doing interrupting his play.  After trying to stare each other down, he scampered down the width of the house and jumped onto our privacy fence.  I watched as he ran around the entire fenced yard, and gracefully jumped back on the roof and once again began hanging from the gutter.  We again stared at each other.  So was I supposed to applaud or was he showing me something?

I began as usual ... if this were a waking dream, what would it be telling me?  Given my recent focus on repeated behavioral patterns, it was easy to figure out.  When we are hanging by our last thread we are faced with options.  Do we want to take the short lesson running the width of the house or do we want to take the long version which often times returns us right back where we started ... this being the lesson in itself.

This comes easily for me as I am a person who usually takes the longer route.  As I travel along, I get distracted, meet kindred spirits, and my fears subside.  Unfortunately, at some point I realize I am right back where I started and I am still face to face with the problem.  Nothing has been resolved.  If I had taken the shorter route, I would not have been distracted and hopefully I would have discovered resolve, ending up in a very different place.

There is much to be learned from our day dreams if we take the time to truly see what is being shown to us.  The actions of all things tell us a story about our personal life and behaviors.