What's red and yellow and featherless down one side

As soon as the tree goes up, I can stop feeling festive again. It's a great relief. Then all the tinsel and lights just become another way of decorating the flat - totally meaningless, no significance whatsoever. That's how things should be. All things should be insignificant. Even the important things. Less ego.

Some of the things that we do will be bigger than other things. Sometimes we will find ourselves passing our days working away on one small project after another, and sometimes we will be confronted by something enormous, something so big that even when you stand back you can't see all of it at once. And then you have to break it up into smaller pieces, like the squirrel.

Mmmmm, cubed squirrel meat...

At first, you will find that your pan will contain a few small cubes of squirrel. It will be a big, empty pan, with some pieces of squirrel in the bottom. Daunting.

And then, it will start to look like a pan full of squirrel cubes, but with some space in it. Less daunting, but still incomplete. Don't fuck up now. You're not out of the woods yet.

One day, if you are very, very lucky, you will be the proud owner of a pan full of squirrel, all succulent and tender, fresh from the tree. And then you can cook your squirrel, enjoy your squirrel, devour your squirrel.

Devour your squirrel.

Oh, and by the way...

...the answer is: a canary that has been held up to an industrial sander.