Rusty things: the wail of a cat in heat, a squirrel’s slow scold, the cry of a jay, and the black cherry leaves fading to a coppery red.
gray squirrel
The walnut trees are already losing their leaves, turning into grotesquely well-hung skeletons a-tremble with squirrels.
A morning so clear, the half moon looks close enough to touch. A squirrel still spooked by some long-gone predator has yelled itself hoarse.
A violently shaking black walnut branch passes its affliction to an adjacent locust: gray squirrel with an unripe walnut between its teeth.
A perfect morning, clear and cool. A gray squirrel is biting off small branches and carrying them into the thickest part of the tall locust.
White sky thin enough for the sun to shine through. The sound of a bear tearing at a log. A ripple of squirrel alarms as a hawk goes past.
Against the sky criss-crossed by contrails, the sudden whiskers of a squirrel peering over the roof’s edge, fixing me in a bug-eyed stare.
Two squirrels grappling or grooming on a thin tulip poplar branch, among nubbins of new leaves. One slips and falls 30 feet to the ground.
Four gray squirrels interrupt their chasing to scold the feral cat—a Two Minutes’ Hate. In the corner of my eye, the zip of a winter wren.
A squirrel descends an oak at high speed while rolicking robin music plays in the background. Closeup on the maple buds round as stoplights.
The rapid scrabble of claws on bark, that waterfall sound. Three chasing squirrels spiral down the big locust like an animated barber pole.
Cold and gray. The groundhogs are snarling under the house. A squirrel disinters its breakfast and cleans off the dirt with its teeth.
Six inches of fresh powder. A pair of squirrels wrestle in it, then go up the big maple, couple on the trunk, and retreat to separate limbs.
Sunrise stains the western ridge. A squirrel wanders back and forth on an icy snowbank, stirred, no doubt, by the memory of a buried nut.