A cool, clear autumn morning. Every few minutes, another alarm call breaks the silence: pileated woodpecker. Bluejays. A frantic squirrel.
gray squirrel
August 26, 2008
The hollow sound of claws on loose bark: another furious squirrel chase, this time in the dead elm. The chaser pauses to lick its genitals.
August 24, 2008
A squirrel in a black walnut tree drops four nuts in a row. Clumsiness? Sabotage? Another squirrel comes running, and a noisy chase ensues.
August 20, 2008
In the wild black cherry limb that hangs over the entrance to the trail up the ridge, red clumps of stems, a squirrel getting its breakfast.
July 16, 2008
Unseen: a crash in the treetops, followed by a ripple of high-pitched squirrel alarm that travels hundreds of yards in a couple of seconds.
July 13, 2008
A squirrel descending the closest corner of the house spots me watching and freezes, then proceeds jerkily like a film going frame by frame.
June 25, 2008
A squirrel is making a nest in a black locust with small branches it bites off a little higher up, plundering the roof to build the floor.
June 21, 2008
A squirrel is exploring the dead elm at the edge of the yard, racing to the shakey end of each decrepit branch and peering into the abyss.
June 11, 2008
Clear, 54°F. Squirrels leap through the dripping branches, chase each other up and down trunks. A distant traffic noise of cicadas.
June 3, 2008
Two squirrels slowly circle the trunk of a walnut tree, gray against gray, frenetic tails sending Morse messages through the heartwood.
May 31, 2008
In the light rain, a squirrel feasts on red maple keys. Reduced to pieces, the blades flutter straight down, robbed of all ability to spin.
May 20, 2008
A gray squirrel seems to be in heat: as in January, the slow-motion chases, the soft scold-calls, but now mostly hidden by the leaves.
March 7, 2008
A red sunrise. Loud rending sounds as a gray squirrel peels bark from the dead elm tree in the yard, hanging upside-down like a nuthatch.
February 28, 2008
Keening moans from the hole in the big walnut tree. Then snarls: a squirrel rockets out, falls to a lower limb. The moans grow louder.