Unseasonably warm. A raucous flock of juncos courses back and forth behind the house. Squirrels chase at top speed on the forest floor.
gray squirrel
A breeze rustles through dry leaves as loudly as a squirrel, the squirrels as loudly as deer. A blue jay’s call sounds strangely inverted.
A wet, white fur on the fallen elm limbs and the statue they destroyed. A squirrel scrambles up the snag and disappears into the den hole.
In the cold rain, a squirrel sits on an elm limb with its back to the trunk working on a walnut, its tail folded over its head like a hood.
The brackens in my yard have turned from brown to burgundy. High in a walnut tree, a squirrel checks every webworm tent for unfallen nuts.
A squirrel creeps up to the flicker hole in the dead elm, but another squirrel pops out chittering and gives chase through the treetops.
A squirrel leaping between treetops miscalculates and falls 40 feet to the ground. It lies stunned for a minute, walnut still in its teeth.
A squirrel hangs by its hind feet to pick a pair of walnuts, drops one, climbs off with the other in its teeth. The day darkens into rain.
A slight breeze brings a shower of petals from the tulip tree, while a squirrel at the top of the black walnut makes it rain catkins.
Sun in the treetops. A squirrel hangs head-down from a walnut branch to eat the flowers. My lover combs the tangles from her long hair.
Red maple limbs laden with keys tremble from a pell-mell squirrel. I hear tapping on the storm door, open it and a bee flies out.
Dawn. Three deer become two, become three again. The sound of squirrel teeth on black walnut shell—that harsh madman’s whisper.
This snow makes it so much easier to keep track of squirrels, their mad chases on the ground, through the trees—showers of white dust.
Fog at daybreak, and a thin coat of sleet like coarse sand. From up in the woods, the sudden squealing of a squirrel fighting off a suitor.