Sunday detour 6: squirrel!

When I glanced at the blog comments on my phone, Interstice said that
he (realistically _he_, but if not, I want to marry her) wanted to see
the story about the friendly squirrels.

This (which has no excuse taking more than an hour to finish and shove
out the door) has actually been sitting in my drafts since the
beginning of the blog more than five years ago! People really mostly
don't do things!

diff --git a/content/drafts/friendship-practices-of-the-secret-sharing-plain-speech-valley-squirrels.md b/content/drafts/friendship-practices-of-the-secret-sharing-plain-speech-valley-squirrels.md
index fc7eb64..f061ad2 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/friendship-practices-of-the-secret-sharing-plain-speech-valley-squirrels.md
+++ b/content/drafts/friendship-practices-of-the-secret-sharing-plain-speech-valley-squirrels.md
@@ -6,22 +6,16 @@ Status: draft
 
 In the days of auld lang syne on Earth-that-was, in the Valley of of Plain Speech in the hinterlands beyond the Lake of Ambiguous Fortune, there lived a population of pre-intelligent squirrels. Historical mammologists have classified them into two main subspecies: the west-valley ground squirrels and the east-valley tree squirrels—numbers 9792 and 9794 in Umi's grand encyclopædia of Plain Speech creatures, but not necessarily respectively: I remember the numbers, but I can never remember which one is which.
 
-Like many pre-intelligent creatures, both subspecies of Plain Speech Valley squirrels were highly social animals.
-
-Much of their social lives 
+Like many pre-intelligent creatures, both subspecies of Plain Speech Valley squirrels were highly social animals. Much of their lives concerned the sharing of information about how to survive: how to fashion simple tools for digging up nuts, the best techniques for running away from predators, what kind of hole or tree offered the best shelter, _&c._ Possession of such information was valuable, and closely guarded: squirrels would only share true secrets with their closest friends. Maneuvering to be told secrets, and occasionally to spread false secrets to rivals, was the subject of much drama and intrigue in the squirrels' lives.
 
+[TODO: why be secretive? Surely if they pooled information together, they could accumulate mastery over the environment]
 
 (well, there's a reason the ascension of Earth-that-was would be sparked by the _H. sapiens_ line of hominids some millions of years later, rather than by the Plain Speech species 9792 and 9794.)
 
-
-sharing secrets
-
-
+[TODO: novelty instincts about secrets make cross-species friends more desirable, but species differences also make them frustrating]
 
 "I wish I had a special friend. Someone who understood me. Someone to share my secrets with."
 
-And beside them, a friend or a mate 
-
-"But _I'm_ your friend. _I_ understand you. You can share your secrets with _me_."
+And beside them, a friend or a mate would attempt to comfort them, saying, "But _I'm_ your friend. _I_ understand you. You can share your secrets with _me_."
 
 "That's not what I meant."