The other week I was packing up from reading on the front porch of the front house, and I see my (wizened) (hippie) neighbor standing in the middle of the street, staring at a squirrel a few feet up the base of this one giant tree.
"It fell out of its nest," she was like. "I hope it's okay."
"Ohhh," I was like, and then I explained that like ten or fifteen minutes earlier I had seen way up in the tree a squirrel and a raven squawking at each other, and the squirrel occasionally chasing the raven, and maybe the squirrel was worried about the raven getting at the baby squirrel.
"Oh, I hope it's okay," she was like. "I don't know what to do."
"It should be okay," I was like. "It's not a baby baby, it's a little bigger, and it's running up that tree trunk all right."
I was also like, "And, that other squirrel is watching over it, so it should be okay."
"Yes," she was like, "It must be his mom. Or maybe his aunt."
"Ohhh," I was like, mildly sadly. "You know, we really shouldn't project sexist stereotypes onto the animal world."
At that, she looked straight at me.
"I agree," she was like, soberly.
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