gray squirrel – Page 31 – The Morning Porch

January 31, 2009 by Dave Bonta

I can hear my mother yelling at the squirrels: Go! Go! Go! It occurs to me that snow is the opposite of water, slippery when dry.

January 21, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A gray squirrel sits motionless for several minutes on the topmost crook of a fallen limb. Then like a diver it plunges into the snow.

January 9, 2009 by Dave Bonta

At first light, a rare glimpse of a rabbit below the porch. I can hear the ice shattering as it chews on a clump of dead brome grass.

January 2, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Leaden sky. The loud whisper of a jet. Squirrels scuttle through the white fur on the leaf litter, searching for memories of buried nuts.

December 30, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Clear and cold at sunrise, with gusts of wind and a roaring up on the ridge. Chickadees like yard-sale shoppers darting from find to find.

December 19, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Sleet to rain to sleet to rain: the tapping on the roof above my head keeps changing pitch. Faint notes of chickadees, titmice, a nuthatch.

December 9, 2008 by Dave Bonta

How the acoustics vary from one morning to the next! Yesterday, the hollow was a soundproofed room; today it’s as echoey as a concert hall.

December 6, 2008 by Dave Bonta

It’s cold—the porch floorboards pop when I come out—and still as a tomb. The distant calls of a female great-horned owl go unanswered.

December 5, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Juncos gather on the gravel driveway, replenishing their gizzards with grit. Up and down the big maple, it’s squirrel kabuki, love and war.

November 18, 2008 by Dave Bonta

A three-point buck emerges from the woods, hooves crunching through the icy seep, the sky pink behind him and ahead, the blood-red hill.

November 7, 2008 by Dave Bonta

As the canopy thins, clots of leafy nests are beginning to appear: the nuclei of neurons. Squirrels race between them, quick as thought.

November 2, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Two squirrels meet nose-to-nose on a maple trunk and grapple gently, gray against the gray bark. They freeze for a second and almost vanish.

October 31, 2008 by Dave Bonta

6:20 a.m. All through the newly bare branches of the black walnut tree beside the driveway, the stars glitter, too high for any squirrel.

October 9, 2008 by Dave Bonta

A squirrel with a walnut in its mouth trots across the porch, right under my chair. Five minutes later, another follows suit. What the hell?