Audiences

Last weekend I was at the park practicing playing guitar (some alliteration for y’all). I was sitting under a small picnic shelter on top of a large cement table watching the birds, ground squirrels and even an occasional human.

The ground squirrels I am talking about are not the same as the ones in a more temperate climate; they look more like what some might call gophers. But, as you can tell from the picture I included (but didn’t take) they are very cute.

I could see a few of these round-tail ground squirrels digging looking around for food, digging and otherwise popping in and out of their burrows.

One came over and stopped about 5 feet from me and looked up into my eyes at the end of one song. His eyes were wide with fascination. He kept looking and since he didn’t seem scared I asked him:

“Should I play you a song? O.K. This next one is for you little gopher-man!”

Not knowing what to play for a ground squirrel I opted for a song called, “A Bad Half Hour”. It’s a sad poem by Charles “Badger” Clark put to the melody of the really, really old song, “Annie Laurie”.

Seeming to enjoy the song this little guy lays down on the ground and keeps his wide, cute, dark eyes locked kindly on me. I find this fascinating because rodents have the same attention span as a teenager with a Blackberry. And although he didn’t watch me the whole song he did stay in the same spot for a good couple minutes, rolling around on his back and turning around before going back onto the dirt.

The cactus wren, in all fairness was less amused. One flew down and over to me and listened for a bit and cocked one eye up towards me as if to say: “You call that singing?”.

Which compared to a cactus wren is a fair point to make, I must admit. Still, the squirrel and I seemed to enjoy it.