Squirrels Don’t Get the Sunday Scaries
What wildlife can teach us about working hard, resting well, and remembering to live.
I saw something on social media recently that stopped me mid-scroll. It said something along the lines of, "Humans are the only creatures who know what a Monday is.”
I stopped. I thought about it. Then I took a screenshot.
That's how a surprising number of Field Trip stories begin. I stumble across something interesting, and suddenly I have questions. One little thought turns into a rabbit hole (sometimes literally), and before I know it, I'm researching something I had absolutely no intention of researching that morning.
And since I have a particular soft spot for squirrels, that’s where I started and where the title here came from.
I've spent time rehabilitating squirrels, so I know their lives aren't all acorns and adorable antics. But the idea of a squirrel experiencing the Sunday scaries still made me smile.
Squirrels don't dread returning to work on Monday. They don't count down to Friday or lie awake wondering what the coming week will bring.
But that doesn't mean they don't work. And they aren’t the only ones.
Squirrels gather groceries. Beavers build homes and maintain the infrastructure that protects them. Bees commute to flowers to collect food. Birds travel extraordinary distances, raise families, and defend their homes. Some animals spend much of their lives preparing for the seasons ahead.
They work to feed themselves, protect their families, find shelter, and survive.
Sound familiar?
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether the difference between our wild neighbors and us isn't so much what we do, but how we experience doing it.
And whether, somewhere along the way, we've started treating the time we spend working as more important than the time we spend on the things we're working to protect.
The Squirrel Has Bills to Pay. Sort Of.
If you've ever watched an Eastern gray squirrel in autumn, you know those little guys are BUSY.
They're gathering acorns, burying nuts in scattered hiding places, maintaining nests, and paying close attention to everything happening around them.
Unlike some ground squirrel species, Eastern gray squirrels don't hibernate. They rely partly on food they've cached away during more abundant months, retrieving those reserves when food becomes harder to find.
And their preparation matters.
A successful autumn can mean a better chance of making it through winter. A poor crop of acorns can affect not only a squirrel's survival but also its ability to successfully raise young the following year.
I've cared for squirrels that needed human help, and that experience makes it difficult for me to romanticize their lives. Even the healthiest squirrel must navigate predators, weather, competition, food shortages, and countless other threats.
A missed opportunity to gather food could have consequences far worse than missing a deadline.
Which got me thinking: Is the stress of human work really so different?
We tend to separate our jobs from basic survival because there's typically a paycheck between the work we do and the food we eat.
But the connection is absolutely there.
We work to keep a roof over our heads, feed our families, access healthcare, and create some security for whatever comes next.
Our jobs may not look much like gathering acorns, but for many of us, they serve essentially the same purpose.
Of course we sometimes feel stressed about work. Of course an uncertain job situation keeps us awake at night.
The stakes can be pretty darn high.
And when Sunday evening rolls around, maybe part of what we're experiencing isn't simply dread about another week of manual labor, dealing with grumpy customers, an overflowing inbox of emails, or meetings that could have been one of those emails. Maybe it's the pressure of knowing how much depends on us showing up tomorrow.
But there's something reassuring about recognizing that. Work isn't just an obligation imposed on us. At its best, it's one of the ways we care for ourselves and the people we love.
Unlike a squirrel facing winter with only its stored food and survival skills, many of us have access to forms of security our wild neighbors never will: steady paychecks, climate-controlled homes, stocked grocery stores, and help when things go wrong.
But those securities aren't guaranteed, and they certainly aren't equally available to everyone.
Losing a job can threaten someone's housing, healthcare, and ability to feed their family. Working full-time doesn't guarantee financial stability. And when there's no savings cushion, no paid time off, or no reliable safety net, even a relatively ordinary workweek can carry extraordinary stress.
That's not a failure to achieve work-life balance. That's a real survival concern.
We shouldn't dismiss it with a cheerful suggestion to take a bubble bath or go touch some grass.
But here's where the squirrel offers a different perspective.
All that gathering and storing has a purpose. Those acorns are reserves for the days when finding food becomes more difficult. Preparation and survival are connected.
And I wonder whether we could benefit from being a little more intentional about what we're working toward.
Are we building security, creating opportunities, and making room for the things that matter to us? Or have we become so accustomed to staying busy that the work itself has become the goal?
Mortgage companies, rather rudely, do not accept acorns. (Which is really too bad because my backyard has plenty.)
No, most of us can't simply stop working. But we might be able to reconsider what all that work is supposed to make possible.
Nature Understands That Rest Is Serious Business
We often imagine wildlife as perpetually busy, and plenty of animals are. But their lives also demonstrate how essential recovery is to survival.
Consider hibernating bats.
When insects become scarce, certain bat species dramatically reduce their metabolism and survive winter on stored fat.
It's not a luxurious extended nap. It's an extraordinary biological strategy for conserving energy.
In fact, waking from hibernation costs so much energy that repeated disturbances can cause bats to burn through their reserves too quickly—sometimes with fatal consequences.
Rest isn't a reward for their hard work. It's part of what keeps them alive.
We can't hibernate through our busiest months (tempting as it may be), but perhaps we can stop treating rest as something we must earn after everything else is finished.
Because when is everything ever finished?
And bats aren't the only creatures whose survival depends on knowing when to pause.
Let’s talk about migratory birds. Some undertake journeys spanning thousands of miles, navigating oceans, mountains, storms, and all sorts of hazards along the way.
For many species, those journeys depend on stopover habitats where they can rest, eat, and replenish their energy reserves before continuing.
The stopping is part of the journey.
Think about that.
How often do we treat breaks as interruptions rather than necessities?
We rush through lunch, fill our weekends with chores, and sometimes turn vacations into carefully scheduled endurance events.
We plan for the destination, but do we give enough consideration to what we need along the way?
Of course, not every stopover needs to be a weeklong vacation. Sometimes it's lunch outside instead of at your desk. An evening walk. A quiet morning with your coffee and absolutely no agenda.
The chinstrap penguin offers a remarkable example of adaptation. (I told you I like to go down research rabbit holes.) Researchers discovered that nesting penguins can take more than 10,000 microsleeps per day, averaging around four seconds each, accumulating sleep while remaining vigilant against threats to their nests.
Now, please don't attempt four-second naps during your next staff meeting—and definitely not during your morning commute.
But it illustrates something important: There's no single formula for recovery, even in nature.
The specific ways animals rest vary enormously. What doesn't vary is that rest serves a purpose.
And while we humans may need a very different approach, perhaps we could give our own recovery a little more respect.
Even Bees Play
In a 2022 study, scientists found that bumblebees repeatedly rolled little wooden balls even when doing so offered no food or other obvious practical reward.
The researchers concluded that the behavior met established scientific criteria for animal play.
An aside: young bees rolled more balls than older bees, and males rolled balls longer than females. (I’ll just leave that right there for you to ponder.)
Yup. Bumblebees playing with balls.
These were controlled experiments, not observations of wild bees organizing tiny soccer matches. But the discovery challenges our assumptions about creatures we tend to view as little more than workers.
We associate bees with constant productivity. Busy as a bee, right?
Yet even these remarkable little workers demonstrated behavior that wasn't immediately about collecting food, protecting the colony, or accomplishing something useful.
There's something wonderful about that.
When was the last time you did something just because it was fun?
Not to improve yourself. Not to create content. Not to check something off a list.
Just because.
Have We Turned Our Free Time Into Another Job?
We hear plenty about multitasking at work. We answer emails during meetings, eat lunch while finishing projects, and bounce between tasks in an effort to squeeze more productivity into every hour.
Research on task switching has shown that constantly shifting attention between demanding activities can make us less efficient, even when we feel like we're accomplishing more.
And I wonder whether we've brought that same mentality into our leisure time.
Think about it.
How many of us eat dinner while watching television and scrolling through our phones?
We listen to an audiobook or podcast while taking a walk. We watch our favorite show while folding laundry. We browse social media while spending time with family.
You are very likely doing something else as you read this.
We squeeze entertainment into errands, hobbies into chores, and relaxation into whatever minutes remain.
There's nothing inherently wrong with any of that. Sometimes a great audiobook makes a boring task better. And sometimes multitasking is simply necessary.
But I wonder whether our determination to squeeze as much pleasure as possible into our limited free time actually diminishes our enjoyment of the individual things we're doing.
Have we become so focused on fitting more life into our free time that we're missing some of the life that's already there?
Take a walk, for example.
Maybe you're listening to a podcast because you genuinely love it. Fantastic.
But what if, just occasionally, you left the earbuds at home?
Would you notice the birds calling from the trees? The change in the wind? The squirrel scolding you from a branch overhead?
Maybe you'd become curious about a bird you couldn't identify. Maybe that curiosity would turn into a little birdwatching. Maybe you'd start noticing things you never realized were there.
You might finish fewer audiobooks this year.
But you might discover an entirely new interest.
Consider an evening at home.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with binge-watching a favorite show. Sometimes that's exactly what sounds wonderful.
But if we're watching television while scrolling through our phones and half-listening to our partners, how much of any of it are we actually enjoying?
What if we watched one episode, really watched it, and then spent the rest of the evening talking?
We might not get through an entire season in two weeks.
But we might have a conversation we'd otherwise have missed.
And maybe that conversation would turn out to be the best part of the evening.
I don't think the answer is to abandon our phones, podcasts, television shows, or favorite ways to unwind.
I think it's to stop measuring our free time by how much we manage to fit into it.
We bring diligence, attention, planning, and commitment to our work because we recognize that it matters.
What would happen if we brought a little more of that same intention to rest, play, and recovery?
Not by scheduling every minute of fun. Please, no.
But by treating the time we spend living as something worth protecting.
Maybe a walk could just be a walk. Dinner could just be dinner. A conversation could have our full attention.
And an hour spent doing absolutely nothing productive could still be an hour very well spent.
A Better Week Doesn't Necessarily Mean an Easier One
Historian David M. Henkin explores our relationship with the seven-day week in his fascinating book, The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are
I've read parts of it, and that little social media post brought it back to mind.
Days have a basis in Earth's rotation. Seasons follow natural cycles. But our seven-day week is a human creation, shaped by centuries of culture, religion, and social expectations.
Nature has rhythms of its own, of course, but a squirrel doesn't know it's supposed to feel differently about a Sunday evening than a Tuesday afternoon.
We've built an extraordinary system for organizing our lives.
I just wonder whether we've sometimes allowed that system to do a little too much of the living for us.
And I want to be careful here. I'm not suggesting that everyone can simply choose a less stressful life. Many people are working multiple jobs, caring for family members, struggling financially, or trying to make it through circumstances they have very little power to change.
Sometimes the answer really is better wages, reliable healthcare, paid leave, predictable schedules, or a more secure job—not a better morning routine. Those things matter enormously.
But perhaps, within whatever control we do have, there's an opportunity to change how we think about the time that belongs to us.
Maybe the next time the Sunday scaries arrive, instead of immediately resenting the week ahead, we could acknowledge why work feels so important.
This job helps pay for my home. It helps put food on the table. It helps me care for people I love. It helps me prepare for an uncertain future.
That's meaningful.
And if work doesn't currently provide those things, or the worry feels overwhelming, we can acknowledge that reality, too, without pretending a change in attitude will solve it.
Then perhaps we can ask a different question.
If my work helps make the rest of my life possible, am I giving that life the attention it deserves?
Not because we should feel guilty about how we've spent our evenings or weekends.
Not because every moment needs to be meaningful. But because the things that restore us, connect us, and make us happy deserve more than whatever attention happens to be left over.
Maybe the Goal Isn't to Work Less. Maybe It's to Live More.
I don't want to romanticize wildlife.
A squirrel's existence can be brutal. A bat doesn't hibernate because it's embracing a trendy wellness routine. Migrating birds aren't road tripping to an all-inclusive with a swim-up bar.
For wild animals, the balance between effort, energy, risk, and recovery can mean the difference between life and death.
But perhaps that's exactly why their lives are worth paying attention to.
They remind us that effort has a purpose. That survival requires preparation. That energy is not unlimited. That rest is necessary. And that even among the business of staying alive, there's room for behaviors that look an awful lot like play.
We humans have built remarkable systems to make our lives safer and more predictable, even if those systems don't always work for everyone.
We have jobs and grocery stores, calendars and retirement accounts, hospitals and houses with heat.
Those things are worth appreciating.
But we've also become very good at measuring how much we accomplish.
Maybe we could become a little better at appreciating what we experience.
Tomorrow morning, the squirrels outside my window will be doing what I've spent plenty of time observing them do. They'll forage for food, investigate hiding places, chase each other through the trees, groom themselves, keep watch for danger, and retreat to the safety of their nests when they need shelter.
They won't know it's Tuesday. They won't be thinking about Wednesday. And they certainly won't be trying to get ahead on Thursday.
Me? I'll still have a calendar, deadlines, bills, and responsibilities.
And I'll still work hard, because there are people and things in my life worth working for.
But maybe I'll take a few minutes to watch those squirrels instead of checking my email. Maybe I'll listen to the birds instead of another podcast. Maybe I'll enjoy a conversation without checking my phone.
Not because those things make me more productive, healthier, or better prepared for tomorrow.
Just because they're worth experiencing today.
Because while I can't live like a squirrel, I might be able to remember that I am, after all, an animal, too.
And there's a whole world out there beyond my calendar.
