Early spring morning

Yesterday—and I swear this is true—I saw a squirrel run past my window carrying a tennis ball. It was old and faded, but there was no doubt that it was a tennis ball. I am still wondering what the plan was. Maybe it was simply round like a very large nut? But I would have thought that as a matter of supreme evolutionary importance animals had a sense of smell to identify foodstuffs. Or did the squirrel like its fuzziness? Or was she planning a good game for later? Squirrels, I have learned recently, are smarter than dogs, and clearly have a sense of play, so would that be impossible?

In any case, almost immediately, she was running past again and again, carrying odd things up to the hollow tree that functions as a squirrel condo. It seems obvious that she was setting up housekeeping, and although I can see why she might want mouths full of dry moss, I’m still curious about the tennis ball. If she has made any use of the bales of Eli fur I brushed from him over the past few non-rainy days, she won’t have made even a dent in the vast quantities of German Shepherd hair blowing around the front yard and gathering, annoyingly, by the kitchen door. If it is being used for the local nests, I wonder if the young will recognize Eli by his smell, and find him unthreatening—which might be a mistake. The other day my husband removed the remains of a chipmunk from Eli’s mouth, but whether Eli was the killer or merely the scavenger is hard to know. I am bracing myself for the administration of another course of Metronidazole.

The woods must have more sex going on than a Times Square hotel. The turkeys have reached the peak of their spring coloration, and stand around at dawn and dusk, feathers in full extension, swiveling their masculine beauty for all to admire like weird automatons. I long to hold up mirrors for them to see themselves. So long as they didn’t think it was another male encroaching on the family territory, I think they would be deeply gratified.

We have a nest of raccoons brooding in a hollow tree that seems expressly designed for the purpose, having been used in this capacity for many years. I saw mama’s long beautiful tail curling around the tree the other morning. There’s a nest of dramatically marked red-bellied woodpeckers in the top of yet another and more conveniently decrepit hollow tree viewable from the other window, and a pair of wood ducks who come very year, nesting in still another hollow tree deeper in the woods down the hill. On one corner of the house, in the curve of a downspout, is a robin’s nest—they are extremely sloppy builders, leaving long strands of grasses trailing carelessly below the nest (camouflage?)—in precisely the same place they built last year. I’ll be able to stand on the bed and see the babies. I had to keep the fireplace in the bedroom going for weeks to keep a pair of finches from returning to their favorite nesting spot in the fireplace vent. It was a pretty clever choice for them: sheltered, warm, and impossible to get to, but I lived in terror for months that someone would carelessly flip the switch and incinerate the entire family. The finches seem to have found another spot on the house, somewhere just out of my sight. I can hear them scuffling around up there when I stand on the terrace.

Around the corner at the front, another nest has been built between the house and one (working) shutter. It is constructed of strands of grass and mud, and I hope won’t be disturbed when we replace the roof this summer.

On a more ominous note for all these families, a pair of red-tailed hawks have been sitting together on a branch very high off the ground. Even the raccoons have to be wary for the safety of their young. Life is hard in the wild.

As I write, a group of seven does meandered across the valley and posed prettily among the daffodils in the beams of early sunlight, browsing as a pair of yearlings gently nibbled one another’s ears. A lone turkey, similarly illuminated with a halo of light, sat on a log nearby. There is frost on the grass, and the lake down the hill is sparkling. We gauge the progress of the leaves by whether the lake is still visible from the house, but leaves are still a long way off.

Auggie, who had even more exercise than usual in yesterday’s long-delayed sunshine, is sound asleep, ears twitching, on the couch nearby.

Happy Sunday.