The first animal I owned was a little squirrel. It was in the first grade of elementary school. In the first grade of elementary school, my family lives in the country. One day when I came home from school, I picked up a thin and trembling little squirrel on the side of the road. The hair on his body was not fully grown, and a pair of frightened, freshly opened eyes turned around. go. I held it in my hand and ran home desperately, as if I had picked up some treasure. I could feel the body temperature of the squirrel as I ran.
After returning home, I found a thick bamboo tube and cut it in half, spread it with rags, and made a nest for little squirrels, but its food made our whole family nervous. Milk was not common at that time. After my mother’s suggestion, I scooped some rice soup from the top when cooking for three meals and dipped it in a torn bag of flour. The hungry squirrel sucked the rice soup tightly, so that we all felt relieved.
Slowly, the squirrel grew bright brown hairs and was able to crawl with twists and turns. Preparing food for it every day has become the happiest thing in my life. Fortunately, we live in the country and there is an orchard at home. I often pick ripe papaya, guava, and banana, and mash it carefully to feed my squirrels. Its rapid growth can be seen best from its tail. It was originally hairless and thin, and the tail that was dragged on the ground when it walked, slowly plumped up, covered with loose hair, and haughty.
From crawling, running and jumping, it was like an instant. The squirrel has fully grown into a handsome boy before the end of a semester.
The little squirrel seemed to remember my life-saving grace, very well-behaved and obedient. When I went to school during the day, it went to the garden by itself to look for food, and at dusk, it returned home and hid in its den. When I was doing my homework at night, it went around around the table, jumping here and running, sometimes running around and rubbing people’s feet. Mom often said: “This squirrel is not like a squirrel at all, it’s really like a cat!” The little squirrel’s delicacy has won the family’s love.
Sometimes I go home early, just blow a few whistle in the garden, it is like a gust of wind coming out of an unknown corner of the garden, squatting on my shoulders, rolling eyes, and then we are in the garden Playing a chase game that never gets tired of. The posture of the squirrel is really beautiful when it runs. The tail is raised high like a flag fluttering in the wind, and that flag runs on the muddy ground like a puff of smoke, which is fleeting.
Since squirrels were raised at home, the number of rats has decreased. That was the first time I knew that squirrels would still attack rats. It bounced around the house at night, maybe the mouse couldn’t tell which animal it was, so it had to go elsewhere to find food.
My family used to raise a lot of animals, including seven or eight hunting dogs and native dogs. They often follow Dad to hunt; there are more than a dozen cats playing in the courtyard every day. The origin of most of these animals is unknown. Because my family is a big family, there are a lot of daily leftovers. In addition to raising pigs, my mother often uses a few large pots and puts them in the yard to feed the cats and dogs that live in the countryside. After a long time, many cats and dogs stayed; there were better dogs, and my father picked them out to train them to catch hares and hunt boars. These wild dogs have a passion, and they can often become better than famous breed dogs. Because they are not picky eaters, they are less attached to life than famous breed dogs. They can often go forward without hesitation when hunting.
But these cats and dogs never enter the house. Their world is the vast wilderness outside the house. They find a place to sleep under the eaves at night, and they emerge from every corner in the early morning. The little squirrel became the only animal sleeping in the house, sensible and cute, especially loved by his family. Originally, we were worried about the safety of so many cats and dogs, and we were worried about the safety of squirrels. Later, we discovered that this worry was completely unnecessary. Little squirrels played well with cats and dogs. I think that as long as they live in a vast and boundless space, even animals can have a selfless heart.
What’s interesting is that the little squirrel seems to know that I was the one who picked it up, and is very close to me. Although it maintains a good relationship with its elder brother and younger brother, it only calls upon them and never jumps on them. , But often fell asleep on my lap while I was doing homework. Sometimes I take a squirrel to school and put it in my school bag with its head and tail sticking out from both sides. It doesn’t panic at all.
The emotions between the squirrel and me gave me a sound, colorful and bright jumping time when I first went to school. The students thought that this squirrel had received special training, but it was not. It was just picked up by me from the roadside to raise it. When I think about it as an adult, I realize that if a squirrel needs to be trained, the only training content is to give it the most selfless and clean love of a child.
One night in the winter of the following year, I had dinner and went back to the study to do my homework as usual. I sharpened all the pencils in order to write a lot of homework the next day. The squirrel jumped into my sweater to keep warm as it did in the past, and then went around the desk to play with a small ball. I had too much homework and I couldn’t finish it late at night, so I fell asleep on the table.
When I was awakened by Ye Liang, I was shocked by the sight before me and wept bitterly. My beloved squirrel did not know when I had died on the sharpened upside down pencil. The pencil pierced the squirrel’s stomach straightly, and the blood ran all over my right hand and even splashed on the notebook. The blood has dried up, and the cold body of the squirrel has no body temperature. I still remember the shocking scene clearly, even the homework I wrote.
On that day, the teacher ordered each of us to write our name two hundred times. My notebook was densely written with my name, while squirrel blood was dripping on my name. At that moment, I couldn’t tell how much I hated myself. I hate pencils, my own name, and even the teacher who left homework. I think that without them, my beloved squirrel would not die.
I cried with horror and sorrow, awakening my parents who were going to bed early to work on the farmland tomorrow. My mother couldn’t help crying when she saw this scene. I hugged the squirrel tightly when I threw myself into my mother’s arms. I raised animals for the first time, and the animals that really belonged to me died overnight. How swift and miserable I died, and now that I think about it, there will still be a painful twitch in my heart. If I know that there is sorrow in the world and that there is death in the world, the strongest feeling for the first time is that the squirrel gave me its life. I still can’t figure out why the squirrel would die like that. It must be because it was afraid that I couldn’t finish my homework to wake me up, and jumped on the pencil—that was what I really thought at the time.
I wrapped the dead squirrel in a sweater splattered with its blood, and put aside the pencil that stabbed it. Together, I dug a small tomb in the banana garden behind the house and buried it. When I made the new grave, I stood beside and wept silently. That was the first time I knew that all objects and bodies can be buried, but emotions cannot be buried. It is like the soul of a squirrel and lives forever.
Later, I also raised many squirrels, and they always disappeared after being raised. I didn’t feel attached to their masters. I occasionally had one or two who were willing to go home and didn’t listen to them. They didn’t have much affection with others. Whenever this happens, I wonder why in such a vast world, why is there a squirrel so different and full of love that I will pick up and spend a good time with me? Could it be that this world really has any special arrangements in the dark, so that we also have a peculiar fate with animals?
Needless to say, cats and dogs. In the process of growing up, I have raised eagles, rabbits, pangolins, wild turtledoves, sparrows, pasqueflowers, and even a small pig and a wild monkey, but no animal can resemble it. The first squirrel was as close to me, and there is no other animal that was picked up and saved by me and died in my hands like a squirrel.
The death of the squirrel gave a long shadow to my childhood, and it often made me sad for some reason in the future. After more than two decades, I am convinced that there is an unpredictable fate between humans and animals, and between humans, which pushes us forward completely inexplicably, causing us to experience joy and sorrow step by step. From a long-term perspective, joy and sorrow are both a kind of vicissitudes. We live in the vicissitudes of life, just like when I write about squirrels, my heart is warm and sad, and my hands seem to be stained with its blood, that blood. Even if it is imprinted on my fully written name, it will never be washed away forever. It is the only animal in my life, always revealing my love and sadness.
