Overcast and cold. A squirrel is picking up fallen black walnuts, removing their rotten husks, and burying them in the half-frozen yard.
gray squirrel
A break in the gloom as a thin spot in the clouds crosses the sun. Two squirrels locked in combat fall 20 feet to the ground like an enormous fruit.
Deep blue sky. A squirrel is making unusually exuberant, risky leaps from tree to tree, flinging herself into space, trusting in twigs.
Mackerel sky like a furrowed brow. One, three, six blue jays descend on the feeder. The squirrel flees. One jay screams like a hawk.
Under a low cloud ceiling, the thunder of trains and traffic from the valley. The black cat’s deadly silence trips a gray-squirrel alarm.
A squirrel on the porch spots a squirrel in the yard, who freezes. S/he walks slowly under my propped-up legs and down to a silent meeting.
A walnut falls from a maple tree. Squirrel as surrealist. The mid-morning fog beginning to glow.
Two squirrels trace a fast single helix down the trunk of the big maple. The typewriter rattle of their claws.
A warmer morning; the blue sky harbors an ever-so-slight suggestion of haze. The sound of rodent teeth chiseling open a black walnut.
Mizzle. A squirrel emerges from under the porch, spots me, and rears up with one front paw tucked into its chest hair like rodent Napoleon.
Bright and warm. A squirrel in the lilac drops to the ground for a quick roll, as if scratching an itch. A fat fly moves into the shade.
Cloudy and cold. Two squirrels excavate nuts a foot apart in the yard, keeping a wary eye on each other. A red-bellied woodpecker trills.
Overcast. A black vulture drifts back and forth, occasionally flapping its wings—which sets off a squirrel, vigilant against hawks.
Weak sun. Squirrels rummage through the dead grass, studiously ignoring each other, pretending they’re not really after buried treasure.