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?
gray squirrel
Steady rain. Two squirrels passing each other on the driveway circle briefly, as if on an invisible roundabout. A towhee’s mindless chant.
A gray, cold morning. The rusty-hinge scolding of a squirrel multiplies and turns into a flock of grackles, pivoting on its thousand wings.
A cool, clear autumn morning. Every few minutes, another alarm call breaks the silence: pileated woodpecker. Bluejays. A frantic squirrel.
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.
A squirrel in a black walnut tree drops four nuts in a row. Clumsiness? Sabotage? Another squirrel comes running, and a noisy chase ensues.
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.
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.
A squirrel descending the closest corner of the house spots me watching and freezes, then proceeds jerkily like a film going frame by frame.
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.
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.
Clear, 54°F. Squirrels leap through the dripping branches, chase each other up and down trunks. A distant traffic noise of cicadas.
Two squirrels slowly circle the trunk of a walnut tree, gray against gray, frenetic tails sending Morse messages through the heartwood.
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.