Waste is the wrong word: an acorn disappears beneath leaf litter, pressed into soil by paws built for a winter ledger. It looks careless. It is insurance. Scatter-hoarding divides food among hundreds or thousands of caches, a gamble against spoilage, snow cover, rival squirrels, and the plain fragility of memory.That excess is smart risk control, not a botched inventory. Loss is built in. A squirr...More