Cold (-10°C) and quiet, save for my mother’s periodic hollering at the squirrels on their back porch. My clouds of breath rise straight up.
gray squirrel
January 13, 2021
Cold, gray, and still. Two squirrels attract small followings as they wander over the snowpack, a sign of seasonal heat building within.
January 7, 2021
Cloudy and cold. The sound of crows trying to call up a mob. A squirrel perched on a high branch scratches behind its ear with a hind leg.
January 5, 2021
The mockingbird in a bush beside the stream chases off other birds coming in to drink. A squirrel with only half a tail plods over the snow.
January 3, 2021
Snow sky. Sparrows move through the meadow. A squirrel climbs a witch hazel, seemingly to verify that its pods have expelled all their seeds.
January 1, 2021
The sky is a blank slate. High in the trees, a squirrel emerges from its ovoid nest, looks around, and goes back in.
December 20, 2020
It’s snowing. A squirrel carrying a walnut leaps from limb to limb, trailed by a cascade of powder, and disappears into a hollow oak.
December 17, 2020
Cold and still at sunrise. With more than a foot of new-fallen snow, the woods’ edge is an asemic text already being edited by squirrels.
December 16, 2020
The slow, steady accumulation of dry snow. A raven flies low over the trees with something in its beak. A squirrel’s short-lived footprints.
November 30, 2020
Rain and fog at daybreak. Some intrepid deer hunter fires a single shot. I wonder how dry the squirrels are in their high, ball-shaped dreys.
November 24, 2020
With my hat pulled down, I miss whatever winged predator suddenly sets the squirrels off. Maybe it knows how to use the low sun as a cover.
November 18, 2020
Overcast and cold. A squirrel is picking up fallen black walnuts, removing their rotten husks, and burying them in the half-frozen yard.
November 15, 2020
A break in the gloom as a thin spot in the clouds crosses the sun. Two squirrels locked in combat fall 20 feet to the ground like an enormous fruit.
November 6, 2020
Deep blue sky. A squirrel is making unusually exuberant, risky leaps from tree to tree, flinging herself into space, trusting in twigs.