Bleary, I squint at a smudge of sun, watch squirrels running for hundreds of yards through the woods, feet almost noiseless on the soft ice.
gray squirrel
December 19, 2016
January has come early: the icy snowpack hard as a brick, a squirrel already in heat. A pursuing male pauses to groom his face and genitals.
December 13, 2016
I watch a squirrel diligently disinterring a walnut from the frozen earth and think, no. I identify with the crow, its harsh denunciations.
December 7, 2016
The predicted snow is a no-show. A squirrel races up the dead elm, pokes its head in the den hole, and hurries back down. What has it lost?
November 19, 2016
The loud rasp of squirrel teeth trying to gain entry to the chambers of a black walnut. Gibbous moon like an eggshell discarded in the sky.
November 1, 2016
A squirrel on an oak limb freezes in alarm at the figure passing underneath, that blaze-orange cap a color no longer found in the trees.
October 11, 2016
Sunrise turns the western ridge red. A squirrel falls out of a walnut tree and lands with a thump in weeds white with the first frost.
October 4, 2016
Overcast and still. The oaks are dropping their acorns, filling the forest with random thumps and bangs. A gray squirrel’s raspy whine.
September 27, 2016
Sun shimmers in the treetops while rain still drips from the roof. A squirrel climbs a walnut tree carrying a walnut, as if in some proverb.
September 25, 2016
Clear and cold. A squirrel trots into the woods with the green globe of a walnut clenched in its teeth. The oleaginous burble of a wren.
September 18, 2016
Too dark to identify the small birds darting through the forest canopy. A walnut dislodged by a squirrel thumps hard against the ground.
September 15, 2016
A turkey vulture glides low over the trees, circles once to gain altitude, setting off a jay and a squirrel, and soars off down the ridge.
September 9, 2016
The sky darkens, squirrels and jays scold an unseen threat, a pileated woodpecker makes a histrionic exit. Then nothing. The sky brightens.
September 7, 2016
Warm and humid; the birds are more vocal than they’ve been in days. A squirrel slinks across the forest floor, foraging only in the shade.