The advanced scouts for a promised snowstorm. A squirrel gallops across the porch roof and back, sounding like a very small, unshod horse.
gray squirrel
Amorous squeaks of squirrels. A small fissure in the clouds approaches the sun and the frozen landscape brightens for half a minute.
Bitter cold. Clouds hide the sunrise, but the crows still herald it. The squirrels appear to be staying in their nests.
Cold (-10°C) and quiet, save for my mother’s periodic hollering at the squirrels on their back porch. My clouds of breath rise straight up.
Cold, gray, and still. Two squirrels attract small followings as they wander over the snowpack, a sign of seasonal heat building within.
Cloudy and cold. The sound of crows trying to call up a mob. A squirrel perched on a high branch scratches behind its ear with a hind leg.
The mockingbird in a bush beside the stream chases off other birds coming in to drink. A squirrel with only half a tail plods over the snow.
Snow sky. Sparrows move through the meadow. A squirrel climbs a witch hazel, seemingly to verify that its pods have expelled all their seeds.
The sky is a blank slate. High in the trees, a squirrel emerges from its ovoid nest, looks around, and goes back in.
It’s snowing. A squirrel carrying a walnut leaps from limb to limb, trailed by a cascade of powder, and disappears into a hollow oak.
Cold and still at sunrise. With more than a foot of new-fallen snow, the woods’ edge is an asemic text already being edited by squirrels.
The slow, steady accumulation of dry snow. A raven flies low over the trees with something in its beak. A squirrel’s short-lived footprints.
Rain and fog at daybreak. Some intrepid deer hunter fires a single shot. I wonder how dry the squirrels are in their high, ball-shaped dreys.
With my hat pulled down, I miss whatever winged predator suddenly sets the squirrels off. Maybe it knows how to use the low sun as a cover.