There’s this squirrel outside. The little bastard’s running hot, branch to branch, like it’s on the hunt. It runs across branches like it’s the performing in Vegas. The seven foot leap from one bare spring tree to the next is like taking a step into a doorway. It’s scrambling around and around, up the branches, and what the hell’s it after? There’s no stopping to sniff or munch or lick its paws. I follow its path and then I see another squirrel. This one’s a little chubbier, wider in the haunches, with this long, gorgeous puffy tail that just makes me want to sleep in it. Compared to the running squirrel, this one’s got class. So I deduce that the hunter’s a he and the beauty’s a she. She’s sitting on a fallen tree trunk that’s lying horizontally between the crotch of two other tree trunks, sunning herself, waiting for the hunter perhaps, but probably just getting a little early morning sun before it goes and gets swallowed by the clouds. I mean, who waits for a hunter to catch them?
But this hunter, he keeps making his way to her until he’s on that same fallen tree, looking at her. He’s a sad sight, really, kind of scrawny and with a wispy tail that won’t be making anyone want to reach out and touch it. He gets closer, twitch to twitch the way squirrels do, and she’s just staring at him intently, like she’s waiting to run but can’t be bothered. He gets up to her and sniffs and she backs away a bit. I figure it’s that moment, that point when he’s thinking he’s got her and she’s trying to decide. She makes up her mind quick when he pounces and she bolts. They run around the trees like they’re dancing, the smoothest chase I’ve ever seen. She runs faster than him, though, and gets up onto a high, thin branch where he can’t go because the weight of the two of them would be too much. So he gets close and stops, then retreats to that fallen tree to wait for her. He sniffs around, like he’s trying to get anything that he can get, and waits a while, looking around but never up, although squirrel eyes are placed kind of funny so who can tell. She just waits up there and keeps on going with that sun of hers. Eventually, the hunter moves down to the ground where the twisted ivy and leaves make a nice place for him to keep busy, sniffing and pawing at things. Eventually, she also moves down, and returns to her place on the fallen tree.
There are no other squirrels around. That’s an odd bit of something. I used to see lots of them around in the trees back where I’m from, but this place is kind of barren, except for those chirpy things that make noise just out of the corner of your eye so you can never see them. This distraction gets me thinking that there’s nothing more to see, but then the beauty goes and hides in the shadow of one of the nearby trees, looking scared and keeping still down flat to the trunk of the fallen tree. I look around and I just manage to catch a sight of a large gray tomcat on the prowl in the empty lot nearby, skulking around, not letting himself be seen and being a generally sneaky son of a bitch. I never see him again, and she stays hidden in the shadow. The hunter, he’s on the ground still, sniffing around in the leaves for God knows what, making himself look busy. I watch him for a bit and when I look back up to get an update on the beauty, she’s gone. I look up, look down, and nothing. The hunter scrounges around in the leaves for a little longer, then runs up the tree again, to where she used to be. He sniffs and instead of going off in whatever direction she must have gone in, he turns around and follows his same path back across the branches until he also disappears. Tough luck, hunter. Tough life.