I know. I’ve said it – peanuts are not my thing, really, but I do love to sit at my neighbors’ breakfast table every now and then. The view from there is spectacular and more importantly I can admire it while going through content of the wooden bowl that is always there… waiting for cute little me. Some days are better than others as far as the bowl content goes, but I shouldn’t really complain because, the truth to be told, I cannot remember the last time I was hungry. Though I can fetch a worm or two and find a tasty morel if I need to (not to mention few incidentals here and there), I do get a lot of my goodies from the people upstairs.
There is always little something waiting for me on the deck. And I will not even talk about all the blueberries hidden in the woodpile the evening before, which I find to my delight at 5am in the morning. I do not have to worry about cats and dogs, and the people talk to me pretty all day. I do have a good life here, so if I take a peanut or two out of pure gratitude so be it. I will most likely put it away somewhere and then, in a true chipmunk fashion, forget about for a while, find it again, and so on. But that is OK. No one ever held it against me… yet.

Maybe George Orwell was wrong. Let’s think about it for a second… “the distinguishing mark of man is the hand, the instrument with which he does all his mischief”… I am beginning to think that some are much less mischievous than others, if at all.
Well, I do like my neighbors. I often wait for them to come home. They do have caring hands, even though they might be a handful at times.