Squirrels ain’t stoopid

Breakfast Club at Chez Deb's.We have a dogwood tree in the corner garden, and one of its branches finally grew to within Gray Squirrel jumping range of the roof. That was fine for a fairly long time – until one particularly ambitious fellow decided to launch himself at the bird feeder suction cupped to my studio window.

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The soothing sound of silence

A Red squirrel dines on an abundance of hemlock seeds, leaving piles of scales below.Rows of waves crash in thunderous cadence onto the rocks outside my bedroom window. Some 15 miles to the southeast, the Monhegan Island light blinks its warning to passing vessels: “The rock on which I stand has been here billions of years, and likely will be here billions more,” the lighthouse flashes. “Pass with care.”

Winters can be frigidly unforgiving. A young couple who had gone to town one winter day spent longer away than planned. If one is accustomed to living in a winter wood, one knows how to “bank” a fire so it will burn all day, slowly, to keep the house from freezing. But the hour had become late, and the fire expired, leaving the cabin turned cold enough to freeze stuff.

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A matter of perspective

Sharing the bountyA stream splashes down several steps into a pool that is home to at least one growing bullfrog. For the past hour, Old Sol has worked mightily to climb over the oaks and maples that line the ridge.

A Mourning Dove serenades a mate, while in yon garden, tomatoes prepare to be fried green, and the zucchini vines show no sign of my bulk having crashed among them, now two weeks hence. Clearly, I came out the worst in that encounter.

Sometimes, as I sit out under the trees watching a variety of critters go about their daily business, I think about whether we might be in a huge spacarium, like a terrarium only containing multiple planets. We could be, in that imagined universe, like Charlton Heston in the original “Planet of the Apes.”

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