One squirrel leads another through the woods, pausing repeatedly to let it catch up. Only when a third joins in does it turn into a chase.
gray squirrel
A squirrel leaps through the snow-laden lilac up by the other house, chasing the juncos. Their high, tinny alarm-calls sound like laughter.
A squirrel walks slowly through the woods, searching its memory, then stops, digs through the fresh snow and comes up with a nut.
Crows begin scolding a red-tailed hawk on the far side of the field, and a squirrel digging in the yard hurtles into the bridal wreath bush.
Clear and very cold. A single squirrel track crosses the yard, the footprints spaced far apart. The windward side of my face turns numb.
Bitter cold with a wind. The hillside seems unusually still, and after a while I realize it’s because there aren’t any squirrels out.
Three inches of fresh snow, unmarred by a single human track. A scrabbling of claws: five squirrels on the trunk of a dead maple.
Squirrels on the ground: one makes a detour to run along a fallen tree, another digs a walnut out of the dirt and buries it in the snow.
Traffic noise from over the hill is deafening—the icy snowpack has become a sounding board. In the tulip tree, four slow, amorous squirrels.
Snowflakes wander to and fro like alien spacecraft on reconnaissance missions: “All strangely quiet. Dominant species an arboreal rodent.”
A gray squirrel explores a walnut tree, nose down, following each limb to its end. I decide it’s searching for seeds cached by the birds.
Trees glistening with raindrops cast shadows through the rising fog. A sudden ripple of squirrel alarm-calls as a hawk cuts through.
A black walnut crosses the yard, powered by the usual gray squirrel propulsion and planting system. A close rifle shot echoes off the ridge.
Gray sky. A gray squirrel emerges from the tiny attic opening in the springhouse roof and falls head-first into the cattails.