Piece of cake?! At least in my neighborhood they are. I’ll explain.
On Saturday this appeared:
When it was slightly closer to its original form than it is now, it was clearly a graduation cake that met an untimely, probably uncoordinated demise. Needless to say this is a big score for the city wildlife. I keep imagining that I will come home to find a slew of cake-drunk birds and squirrels hanging out on my patio until they can sober up enough to crawl (or fly wobbly) home. While this has yet to happen, I did witness a squirrel attempt to scurry up a utility pole and jump onto the roof of a building while carrying a piece of cake nearly the size of his body. It was a noble effort, but he lost most of it on the jump:
He (or she, of course) then proceeded to eat the bit that still remained in his paws and plan his strategy for the remaining chunk:
The next time I went outside the giant chunk had disappeared. While I realize that any number of things could have happened to it, I like to think that the little squirrel figured it out: sometimes those big rewards involve a lot of little steps along the way. Little bites, my squirrel friend, little bites.