For Christmas dinner we invited friends to come and join us for the afternoon and evening. It was a rousing success, with two of the guests--previously strangers to each other--discovering a shared passion for jazz.

I had baked a loaf of 10-grain bread earlier in the day. It was still warm but sliced by the time our guests arrived. It was supposed to have been a gift for Dan Gent; however, the guest who was bringing bread to break with us had a family emergency and couldn't join us. I'll bake him another this week.

So...Dan's bread was sacrificed to the cause. I put the breadmaker outside for the baking because B's preparations for the dinner Occupied the entire kitchen and livingroom. I should have found some place indoors to bake the bread because

the wonderful odor of baking bread was enjoyed only by the squirrels and

the squirrels came and made off with the beater to the breadmaker, which still had bits of bread clinging to it.

This morning I went out to share some stale bread with the squirrels and birds, scoured the back yard from end to end, and finally found the beater under the rose bush, gnawed clean of all bits of bread. I hope it still works.

In the early afternoon we and our guests had been sitting around the coffee table and Christmas tree, being entertained by the unusually sociable and aggressive squirrels, quite fearless. One had stolen an apple from a centerpiece, which we removed to indoors forthwith. We had wondered at the time why, all of a sudden, we were so attractive to them.

Now I know the attraction: bread, the staff of life, even for squirrels.