Small, furry wild animals have had a long tradition in Europe of being captured and trained as pets for wealthy people who saw symbolism in their affiliation.



We would scarcely now think of squirrels, particularly red squirrels, the smallest and most skittish of the squirrel family, being suitable as housepets. There are, in fact, laws in Canada against the capture and maintenance of wild animals. It seems cruel to consign an animal, in any event, whose natural condition is to be at one with its environment, to being housebound, giving it physical parameters wholly at variance with what nature intended for it.

There are some who think of those ubiquitous curious, and often destructively raiding squirrels as bothersome rodent pests. And there are others, like me and my husband, who appreciate their presence and admire their indomitable resistance against succumbing to adverse conditions, learning to accommodate themselves to being urbanized, yet free. Their survival instinct is equal to that of any other of nature's creatures.

Unlike dogs and cats, whose human-animal connection has been cultivated over thousands of years, based on mutual usefulness which has long outlived its practical value, the emotional affection and mutual emotional dependency remains intact.

We love to feed the squirrels peanuts on our daily ravine walks, my husband and I, noting their actions and anticipation and their amazing antics in their natural environment. Although we were loathe to feed them closer to home because of the prevalence of predatory neighbourhood cats, we succumbed to the need to put out food for birds in this very cold and snowy winter, and the squirrels, seeing an advantage, have taken to visiting us as well.

It was interesting to note a small news item in today's paper that in Russia a kind of renaissance has taken place with squirrels becoming increasingly popular as personal pets, to the point that Moscow parks are becoming depleted of their squirrels by the actions of poachers whose websites offer these ill-gotten prospective pets for sale at 5,000 rubles ($159.50).

1765, "Boy With a Squirrel"

Last winter nature was kind enough to leave us with a less-than-normal-for-Ottawa snowpack. We did have what appeared to be the usual number of snow events, but they were unspectacular. Light enough so that it could easily be shovelled by hand, not requiring the use of the snowthrower, so it was mostly left to languish, unused, in the garden shed. This year, there's been a return to what is always called a 'normal' Ottawa winter, when we become buried under a sizeable snowpack.

Ottawa Sun

With winter storms that dump considerably more than 20 cm. of snow at a time. So this year, it quickly became established -- beginning in November, actually -- that Environment Canada's late autumn heads-up warning that we were in store for more snow, deeper cold than usual, soon morphed into reality. And the snowthrower, used far more frequently this year, has been parked inside the garage, in between and in back of the two vehicles that my husband drives, ready for use.

The municipality has found itself in a bit of a quandary, actually, with the realization that the annual snow budget has vastly surpassed itself, leaving the city with a $21.5-million deficit for snow removal activities. There was a three-day storm that blew in as the 2013 year was wrapping up, preparing to usher 2014 in, in royal style that cost $11.7 to clean up.

That single event had dumped over 41 cm. of snow, 18 mm of freezing rain and topped it all off with about 5mm of rain. Municipal workers were kept busy clearing the bus Transitway, arterial roads, collector roads and city sidewalks. They eventually made their way to residential streets. Somehow it always seems to the residents of the street we live on, that we somehow have offended the powers that be, to the point where they leave our street to the very last.

A sentiment no doubt lingering in the minds of quite a large number of other city residents living on other residential streets who resent having to slosh through the impassable morass of swampy dark snowpiles, trying to balance inside the ridges left by passing cars, themselves swerving and slipping down the unholy mess.

Complaints? None, why would there be any? This is winter, after all, in the second snowiest, coldest capital in the world. We have no wish whatever to urge Ulan Bator, Mongolia, to move over and leave the record of first-place to us.

Truth is, we've had far snowier winters than this one, although the cold temperatures could moderate with a sense of decency; their lingering effects haven't endeared this winter to people anxious to get out and make the most of winter recreation.

There's ample food for thought. The World Health Organization has issued an alarm over international cancer growth rates. Past time to take notice of a dread disease, with an onset largely related to avoidable lifestyle choices.

We're far too sedentary, and we're overweight, and we select energy-dense, but nutrition-deficient foods. This has largely been an accusation levelled at those living within first-world economies. But it is now being expanded to include people living in developing countries, where poor choices that are attractive to human nature become more prevalent.

Middle-age, sedentary and overweight is an acknowledged and well-publicized recipe for diabetes onset as well. And diabetes onset leads invariably to other, aligned health-malign problems like increased opportunities for heart-health and stroke impactions. Blindness, neuropathy, limb amputation all follow the life of a diabetic person struggling to keep blood sugar in check.

And increasingly there appears to be a link between sugar consumption and cancer, as well.  Dr. Gerald Krystal, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at University of British Columbia has been studying that link. Cancer, it would appear, feeds on glucose-laden cells at a rate three times that of other cells. That rapid ingestion of glucose is what leads to lactic acid secretion, increasing in turn cellular pH, encouraging metastasis.

The body's circulating glucose in abundance comes from what is recognized as the standard Western diet. Dr. Krystal has set out through his research to determine whether it is possible to affect the growth of tumours, and even forestall tumour initiation by affecting blood glucose levels. It never occurred to me years ago when I read about diabetes that there is a lower incidence of cancer among people with diabetes than for that of the general, non-diabetic population. Control of blood sugar levels through the diabetes diet protocol at work.

The foods that people who love convenience and tongue-and-palate-tickling tastes of fat, salt and sugar happen to create an environment for cancer that is most hospitable. Calorie-rich, nutrient-compromised, we become what is called in scientific circles, immuno-incompetent. The quality and quantity of our food uptake is killing us.

Dr. Krystal's team of researchers are exploring diet-related tumour growth and initiation. In clinical trials with mice almost half fed the standard western diet developed mammary cancers by mid-age, while none of the mice on the low-carbohydrate, high-protein did.

One of the test mice lived a normal life span on the western diet; the rest died at an early age of deaths associated with cancer. And over 50% of the mice on the low-carbohydrate diet reached or lived beyond a normal life span - for a mouse.

Humans are not mice, but the results of research such as that cited above do tell us something we should be listening carefully to.

The last several days have been exquisitely beautiful in the ravine, after the latest snowfall of 15cm. Directly following the snow, the going was really tough, and the amount of energy expended hauling up the long hills, struggling through the extravagance of new, soft, fluffy snow was an endurance test of some magnitude, but we managed, regardless.

The sun, sailing magnificently through the ocean of blue brightened the atmosphere, sending down the glow of light on the snow covering everything in the ravine and the sights are breathtakingly lovely.

We've also come across many of the ravine regulars, out with their canine companions, who had been disheartened with the extreme cold when day-time temperatures hardly nudged above minus-17 to minus-20 and with a wind, those conditions represented another kind of challenge, to keep sufficiently warm.

The highs we've had lately have enabled us to enjoy our woodland rambles, because minus-6-degrees seems, in comparison to the icier temperatures, almost balmy. And certainly so with sun prevailing and the winds becalmed.

A few days ago we came across a young woman who enjoys the opportunity to run through the woods, and with her go her two miniature Australian shepherds. One of which has the most compelling eyes. Both of whom are high-strung, leery of coming across people or other animals they aren't familiar with, but friendly enough in their own way.

In contrast to Taz, the tiny chihuahua, whom his human companion rescued with the help of the humane society across the Ottawa River, and whom we see on occasion sprinkling his tiny pawprints through the snowy blanketed trails. Today he wore his winter coat despite which as we stopped to talk, it was evident that the cold was impinging on his comfort.

It's that little dog's habit to greet anyone coming across his path with a generous volley of barks. In contrast, Riley, who loves people, barks only at other dogs, not that that is any more attractive as far as civil behaviour is concerned. Taz and Riley have finally become accustomed to one another, but they remain disinterested, each suspicious of the other, reflecting in part the way people often react toward one another.

They looked ancient, a venerable condition that visits all living creatures. With that status comes, inevitably, insecurity of physical movement and a marked decrease in mental acuity. What seemed disturbing under the circumstances was their very obvious frailty. They moved slowly, deliberately, but haltingly and seemingly painfully. Both, husband and wife, gossamer-thin white hair, enfolded skin, used walkers. They had emerged from the very place I had just exited, a bag awkwardly in hand, manouevring themselves and their walkers slowly into their vehicle.

They were well beyond the state of decrepit.

His head was perpetually inclined to one side, his neck appearing frozen in that attitude.

He was once, obviously a force of nature to be reckoned with, tall, robust, self-assured one imagines, and needing no assistance for any conceivable task at hand. On their car's front was one of those poppy-embossed licenses issued only to military veterans. Pride that he had served his country.

He was no longer that robust, well-built man that he once had been. He was wizened, shrunk into himself, a shell of the military officer he once represented.

That he was still driving a motor vehicle, was presumably in possession of a validated driver's license, was beyond belief. He was scarcely able to commit his body to pedestrian functions, how could he manage the physical effort required to drive a car? What might his reactive capabilities possibly be in situations where swift action would be required?

Independence is a fine attribute. As someone myself advanced in years, I reckoned they might be in their early 90s, perhaps even beyond. While I feel that determination to remain independent as long as possible is a healthy alternative to simply allowing a swift decline to set in, I don't believe that anyone should compromise the health and safety of others to achieve their personal satisfaction in independence.

I shudder to think of what might occur if this driver and his passenger were involved in a minor collision, even more if they were the cause of an accident impacting dreadfully on someone else's life.

Several years ago, when we had parked in the lot of a supermarket, with several empty spots on either side of us, I had emerged from our car, opened the back passenger door to extract something, leaning into the car as I did, door wide open. When I straightened up and made to close the car door, I felt a heavy, hard impact. Someone planning to park directly adjacent to us had pulled in just as I was finishing up my little manoeuvre.

I hadn't been hurt badly, just bruised, but I was angry and I let the elderly driver of that car know how angry I was. Wasn't his fault, he said blandly, I was in his way. Besides, he said, defensively, his wife is blind, didn't I notice his wife was blind? No matter that I pointed out she wasn't driving, he had been.

Many years ago a friend who swore by the use of this behemoth kitchen appliance she owned decided she would buy the latest version, having used the one she wanted to replace for quite a number of years and deciding the newer version offered even more kitchen-work capability. She offered me the one she would be replacing. I was intrigued, thought perhaps I was missing something, and this might be the missing link between all the various kitchen chores I took up and achieving greater efficiency. So I accepted her offer gratefully.

This huge thing that took up so much counter space had a handbook accompanying it and I read through it more or less, realizing that it could do just about anything that I did in food preparation, making me, in essence, or my efforts, rather redundant. I began to use it for chopping vegetables, for mixing cake batter, for grinding up meat, that kind of thing, and I soon realized I was using it, and all the paraphernalia that accompanied it, reluctantly. And finally I used it no more. Its use in kneading bread dough would have relieved me from a lot of physical effort, I knew, but it held no appeal to me; I just far preferred to do everything by hand, and soon afterward I gifted it to the Salvation Army thrift store, releasing room on my kitchen counters for items I felt had more usefulness to me.

I guess I'm just attuned to exerting the physical energy required to do these things, and therefore take satisfaction from doing so. Eventually other useful kitchen aids came into my kitchen; never because I had expressed a desire to have them, but because my husband simply cannot resist availing himself of such things, even if they're meant for my use.

When he brought home the breadmaker he eventually bought, I huffed and puffed and said I would continue to make bread dough by hand, and he said fine, he'd use the thing. And over the years, he has. To the point where he makes all the bread I eat daily, over no protests from me.

Then came the counter-top convection oven, and the handy little toaster oven and the large-size microwave too big to fit on the microwave shelf but which had a handy-dandy under-shelf specifically for baking pizzas. And we do a lot of pizzas. And it bakes them to perfection; crusty the way we like the dough to bake, and crisply, the way we like the toppings to be well baked.

I do use all of the latter cooking devices, and appreciate them enormously. Most of my baking goes into the convection oven and I swoon over the results. Cupcakes come out fragrantly moist, and the last cheesecake I baked was delectably light and creamy-smooth. I use the little toaster oven for small casseroles, not for making toast. It's also more energy-economical.

So I guess it's a toss-up; I like bustling about my kitchen doing the things that I've long become familiar with, in my own particular way. But I'm certainly not averse to using some of the useful tools that modern technology has introduced us to. There's a lot of satisfaction in all of that, personally, for me.

Casting about for something to bake for yesterday's dessert, I remembered that I had two cream cheese boxes in the refrigerator that had been there for so long, since I hadn't baked a cheesecake in ages, that I figured they must be getting pretty close to their 'best before' date. What called them to memory actually, although I was well aware of their presence, was the supermarket advertisement I'd perused that morning with cream cheese on sale.

So I took the two little containers of cream cheese out of the refrigerator to reach room temperature, along with three eggs and a sour cream container and left them out while we had our breakfast. After which I set about to prepare a cheesecake. First the crust; graham cracker crumbs, butter and cinnamon crumbled and pressed into an old glass baking dish; prebaked for ten minutes, and then in went the filling. Before adding the filling I lightly sprinkled white chocolate chips over the hot crust. The filling consisting of 2/3-cup granulated sugar, the two bars of cream cheese, the three eggs, vanilla and a quarter cup of sour cream. The cheesecake baked in a low 325-degree Fahrenheit (convection) countertop oven for almost an hour until it appeared puffed, cracked and brown. And then I spread a fruit topping of (quarter cup sugar, 1 tbsp.cornstarch, 3/4-cup frozen raspberries, cooked to a clear glaze) over top, and our dessert was made.

After we'd gone for our usual ravine walk, and had done the week's grocery shopping, I set about the rest of our dinner. I cooked up rice for the chicken soup that was bubbling on the stove top, and I prepared the rest of our meal. A potato kugel (pudding) is a must for my husband on Friday nights; 2 medium-sized potatoes grated with a middling-sized onion, adding an egg, salt and pepper, and a tablespoon or two of flour.

I sprinkled two skinless chicken breasts with garlic powder, dabbed grated ginger root over, then thinly sliced red bell pepper, and finally sliced tomatoes. Over that went a sprinkling of soya sauce, then olive oil. And in a corner of the large glass baking pan I placed large sections of cauliflower to bake along with the chicken. And popped everything into the oven. Voila! dinner was done.