Nobody believes me. But there really are squirrels in Dumaguete.
It was sometime in 2009 in Silliman Village at the house of my then girlfriend when, while doing the dishes, she suddenly paused and froze like a machine shutting down; something she saw out the window stunned her into a blank gaze.
Some creature was moving up and around the branches of the trees in the yard. It wasn’t big, and it had neither scales nor feathers. Maybe it was a monkey but then, it looked too much like a ball. I thought it was a cat, but then it had too much red on its hair. She then told me it was a squirrel.
Of course, I didn’t believe her at that time. And yet, it actually was.
A second encounter came within a year, after moving to a new place near the crossing to Fatima Village. One afternoon while waiting for a pedicab, I noticed a rather big rat running around the nearby telephone wires. I didn’t give it much thought, and went back to waiting for a cab. But then the rat suddenly decided to stand up on its hind legs like a human on top of the telephone pole. Needless to say, it was a freaky sight.
It just wasn’t natural. The thought even crossed my mind that the rat might have been possessed. But then I noticed that the standing rat had a rather fluffy red-looking tail. In that moment, I remembered what the girlfriend had said about there being squirrels in the area, and I started to calm down.
I had previously suspected that the squirrels had been informally brought to Dumaguete by some resourceful traveler. I have since looked it up online, and it seems that there are actually squirrels that are endemic to the Philippines, although I still don’t know what specific species those squirrels in Bantayan might belong to.
They are, however, a wonderful paradox. Squirrels are known as much for their preparedness as for their playfulness.
In science, squirrels are classified as homeotherms, which means that their body temperature remains constant no matter the climate, weather, or season. Hence, they cannot hibernate, and must work hard to store enough food to eat during times of scarcity like winter.
In literature, the great 19th century British poet William Butler Yeats, for example, writes his poem An Appointment about someone who admires the freedom of a “proud, wayward squirrel” springing freely from tree to tree and branch to branch, while the narrator is apparently waiting around and wading through the hierarchy and bureaucracy of a government office.
In another of Yeats’ poems titled To a Squirrel at Kyle-na-gno, he straightforwardly and longingly writes to a squirrel in the very first line, pleading, “Come play with me[.]”
I am glad to say that in Dumaguete, the most fun and creative people usually also happen to be the most disciplined and hardworking. They have a natural love to explore the trees of the forest, and to glide with abandon against the wind.
At the same time, they persevere during times of challenge and adversity through preparation and persistence.
We might be able to learn much from our friendly little squirrel. We play but not to the point of recklessness, and we prepare but not to the point of forgetting to enjoy what we work on, and why we work.
Preparedness with playfulness — such is a balance worth striving for.
This City has many squirrels, and I look forward to writing about more of them.
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Author’s email: micahdagaerag@outlook.com
