The Lathe of Heaven goes CNC

I guess the weirdness started when I recently picked up and re-read a classic Ursula K. LeGuin novel, A Wizard of Earthsea.  Good stuff, a fair bit of which was - ahem - later borrowed by the author of the Harry Potter series.   Another favorite LeGuin book of mine is The Lathe of Heaven.  In it the premise is that a man is able to alter reality by the content of his dreams.  This is a thoughtful concept and handled well, but dreams seem such an inefficient way to alter reality.  Rather like the difference between making something on a simple lathe versus a 21st century CNC machine.

It appears I have stumbled upon a more efficient method.  The bedtime stories I make up for grandchildren have started coming true.

It was a week or so back. The grands were staying over on a night that had storms and high winds.  We peered out the window and watched the branches of trees flailing back and forth alarmingly.  In fact a big maple tree in the neighbor's yard had one huge branch shear right off and land on their car.  It made quite an impression.  On the grands that is, the car surprisingly just had a broken mirror and a series of dents on the top.

Bed time story that night was about a mamma squirrel putting her baby squirrel to bed.  Of course there were squirrel snacks involved and squirrel bedtime stories about acorns.  Finally the baby squirrel insisted on being rocked in his nest but just then the wind blew up and gave him a wild, crazy ride.  I did at the last minute say that the part of the tree that the squirrel nest was in did not fall down.  

The next morning in our own yard there was a disorderly pile of sticks and leaves.  A fallen squirrel nest.  Tipping it over I found.....a newborn baby squirrel.

Grey squirrels generally have litters of 2 - 4 and this was the only kit to be seen.  According to the Internet mother squirrels will come and retrieve fallen young, and the best thing to do is just put them in a bit of nesting near the base of the nearest tree.  This we did and a few hours later the baby squirrel was gone.

Props to mamma squirrel by the way.  They tend to be scatterbrained parents, having random batches of children several times a year and by assorted fathers.  They put them up in ramshackle nests that always look ready to fall apart.  From what I've heard them say I bet they scold all the time.  But they sure are devoted.

Of course bedtime stories the following night had a much happier tone to them.  I'm considering a sub plot where grandpa wins the lottery.