Three Visions of Animal Life

On a granite ledge of a university building, three squirrels(1), one black and two gray, crouch, each peering into a window like covetous peeping toms, like Hindu penitents contemplating their promised reincarnations as office workers. They chase away other trespassing squirrels, as if hungry for their treasure.

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At work, our office specialist brought in a bundle of hardened, late-summer acorns to decorate the front desk. On Monday, he noticed holes in the acorns, tiny piles of wooden powder, a white little grub(2) wriggling on the desktop, one more struggling in the carpet's synthetic fibers, and a third crushed by someone's shoe.

He discovered that these grubs were the larvae of the acorn weevil(3), which, once borne from their seed, immediately burrow underground and abide three years for their incubation into weevil. They then climb the nearest oak and with their long, slender proboscises drill holes into the tender flesh of new acorns. They lay an egg in each hole and cement it their with feces. In time, the acorns fall and the larvae chew their ways out, and again burrow into the ground.

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The next day, rather than evacuate the acorns, our specialist decided to cultivate the grubs, watching attentively as they, one by one, chewed and poured themselves out of the acorns. He then scooped each one up on a piece of note paper and dropped it out the window, to the dirt below.

We adopted the weevils as our mascot. The acorns still piled on the desktop, I offered up a panorama. The first picture shows the grub, the second the mature acorn weevil, and the third shows a woman roasting up a clutch of acorn weevil grubs, with the inscription, "Yum Yum!!"(4)

1. Picture of Black Squirrel in Classic Crouch Position from http://skyways.lib.ks.us/towns/Marysville/.

2. Picture of Larva from http://www.evidencesofcreation.com/nature08.htm.

3. Picture of Acorn Weevil from http://www.biosurvey.ou.edu/okwild/misc/boawee.html.

4. Picture of grub cooking from http://web.grinnell.edu/anthropology/Faculty/johnw.html.