Cold and still. A tall black locust is loud with squirrel claws. Snowflakes as fine as dust begin to fall.
gray squirrel
Clouds like a thick, gray quilt. The creek has sunk to a whisper, and the threadbare snowpack crackles like wax paper under the squirrels’ feet.
Fog above the fresh snow—a paler shade of white. A gray squirrel thrusts her head into the ground and comes up with a white cap and a black walnut.
Gray and still, except for the creek’s trickle. A squirrel dangles from a low branch of the springhouse tulip tree, trying in vain to tear off a strip of bark.
Windy and cold, with gray squirrels leaping through the treetops. Half an hour past sunrise, the distant bugles of Canada geese draw my attention to a patch of blue sky.
Bitter cold and still at dawn, as the first silouette of a squirrel emerges from its nest of sticks and leaves high in the limbs of the big tulip and descends the tree, claws ticking against the bark. The clouds redden. A distant rifle booms.
Rain zebra-striped with snow; the woods more wet than white. A sodden squirrel trots down the road with a black walnut between her teeth.
One degree above freezing and very still. The sun’s slow climb through bare branches. The sound of gnawing rodent teeth in three directions.
Clear and cold. The red squirrel makes its usual racket while the gray squirrels leap silently through the treetops. The western ridge turns red.
Rain. The rumble of a distant jet. A squirrel crouches on a limb with her tail over her head, chiseling open a walnut.
The rain goes on and on for hours. I watch a drenched squirrel at the end of a branch lose his grip on a walnut. A small brown moth circles my face.
Rainy and cold. The tall goldenrod heads are bowed, flowering downward. A squirrel’s keening alarm for a hawk.
Distant shots from a semi-automatic: poppoppoppoppoppop. The flutter of a falling leaf. A squirrel’s footsteps on the roof.
A dawn too cold for crickets, and still except where a squirrel makes a branch tremble. From the top of a black locust, a hairy woodpecker’s nasal chirps.