A Sign of Life

I love going outside this time of year, when snow is still covering the ground yet birds are singing and spring is right around the corner!  From skunk cabbage poking up through the snow to create hot springs for insects to symphonies of birdsong, there are many signs that the wheel is turning and the transition from one season to another has only the stage of thaw between.  The one sign that many people forget to look for to see life awakening, is death.

With this time of year, comes a cleansing for the bees.  As a superorganism, I view their action of taking the dead bees out of the hive as similar to a human lymphatic system.

These bees helped the bee superorganism live through the cold months by moving their muscles slightly to create warmth for the cluster and now they are removed to return to the earth and become nutrients for the next generation of flowers that they helped to create.  This sign of dead bees, is a sign that the bee superorganism is alive.

I walked out my front door just two days ago and was greeted by a chorus of mourning squirrels only to see the reason for their wailing just below them.

A red fox had just caught a squirrel and had the squirrel in its mouth as it began to make the trek home.  This sign of death, is a sign of life.

It is not morbid, though it is a reminder that life is not possible without death.  An honoring of death is also an honoring of life.

As I stood respectfully as witness on my porch, I thanked each animal for being its truest self.

 

This is my honoring of the death of the squirrel, as a sign of life.