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.
gray squirrel
Clear and cool. I watch a gray squirrel descend a tree, search its memory/the ground for a walnut, dig it up, and find a secluded spot under the lilac to chisel it open.
Overcast and damp. The roofs drip; leaves glisten. The sound of fast squirrel claws on bark. An animal under the house lets out a snarl.
Clear and still, except for some noise from the quarry—the crusher digesting its breakfast of stone. A deer’s footsteps up in the woods. A scolding squirrel.
A pause between showers. The thud of a walnut dropped by a squirrel. A housefly circles the porch. The rain starts back up.
Cool and still with thin clouds. On the road-bank, a gray squirrel noses about in the leaves, as if searching its memory.
Clear and still, except for the distant beeping of quarry trucks. A common yellowthroat darts through the lilac bush, foraging for breakfast. A gray squirrel sounds the hawk alarm.
Sunlight shimmers on the fur of a squirrel chiseling the shell of a disinterred nut, the morning coolness slowly giving way to heat.
A commotion of gray squirrels in the spicebush next to the springhouse, where one seems to be in estrus-induced discomfort, and five others are there to help out.
Cool and overcast, without a breath of wind. A branch breaks under the weight of a squirrel, who leaps to safety. A cerulean warbler and a field sparrow trade licks.
High drama in the trees behind the springhouse, where a red squirrel contends with the local grays. A jet with no contrail slips like a needle through the blue, its roar trailing far behind.
Overcast and cool. A pair of love-struck squirrels appear to have designs on my house, climbing the red cedar, peering in the windows.
Rain and fog. The birds call one at a time, as if auditioning. A sodden squirrel, grayer than gray, trots across the gray gravel road.
Heavily overcast at mid-morning. I watch a squirrel surveying the yard from atop a stump, then loping over and retrieving a husked walnut from a tuft of grass.