Post by Die Fledermaus on Nov 16, 2007 21:54:36 GMT -4
This is a sweet, interesting, and informative story which I recommend highly.
MISTLETOE:
One Year in the Life of a Gray Squirrel
by Jim Conrad
Read Mistletoe's story month by month...
**********JanuaryFebruaryMarch********** **********AprilMayJune********** **********JulyAugustSeptember********** **********OctoberNovemberDecember**********
JANUARY (The Snow)The big jump, four legs spread wide, tail streaming afterwards... Our squirrel -- her name is Mistletoe -- sails from the Black Oak toward the house, for an instant almost flying through dark, early-morning sky. Landing lightly at the rooftop's lower corner, she silently bounds for a few seconds along the green metal gutter, then leaps into the Sugar Maple.
Scrambling downward through the tree's black maze of leafless branches and twigs, in seconds she reaches the resting spot on the trunk, four feet above the ground.Here she clings, her whole body pressed close to the cold bark, her fuzzy tail pointing straight toward the sky, nothing but fear between her and the sunflower seeds on the ground. For, somewhere inside the hedge of Privet bushes there may be something dangerous hiding, something like a cat which in half a second can rush from the shadows and kill. And as Mistletoe waits, glancing from side to side again and again, all the time she is aware of this: Something in this new day feels strange. The morning's icy air tingles with anticipation. Every wild creature on Peace Hill and in the entire city must smell and taste and feel this troubling something. Even the birds notice it. So busy, so busy, so busy is every bird visiting the Alexanders' feeding station.
The Carolina Chickadees, the Tufted Titmice, the Blue Jays, the House Finches, the Mourning Doves, all stuffing themselves as if never again will they have a chance to eat. How greedily these birds push and peck at one another and nervously flit from spot to spot. The weather is not good. At 8:00 o'clock on this unsettling morning the sky grows darker, not lighter. However, even as Mistletoe clings to the Sugar Maple's trunk, this hard-to-talk-about feeling in the air is crystallizing into something understandable. Yes, out of this fearful-looking sky, carried on bone-chilling breezes that just now are beginning to stir, there begin to fall amazingly large, widely spaced snowflakes. In slow motion they fall, not hurrying to reach the earth at all. Soundlessly they shatter onto the ground, leaving powdery, white splotches that look like teaspoons of white sugar dumped for no good reason. Because the ground is frozen, the snowflake-powder doesn't melt. The Alexanders' backyard is surrounded by a dense Privet hedge and tall trees.
Since Jan, the mother, loves to watch birds from her kitchen window, just outside her window there are two bird feeders and a birdbath. One feeder looks like a basketball-size, four-sided, plastic lantern, and it dangles from a low-arching branch of the big Hackberry. The second feeder is just a wooden tray nailed to a post stuck into the ground. Mistletoe's favorite visiting place is beneath the second feeder. That's because this is where, every morning, Jan scoops out a big heap of store-bought sunflower seeds. As soon as she returns inside Cardinals and Blue Jays swoop down and gorge themselves. But these are messy birds who often knock as many seeds onto the ground as they eat. Therefore, if a squirrel noses into the spongy carpet of empty sunflower-seed hulls that for years has accumulated below the feeder, it's always easy to find a few unopened seeds! And how plump, and oily, and tasty those wonderful sunflower-seed kernels are... All at once Mistletoe leaps onto the ground. Through the falling snow -- it's coming down much harder now than just a minute ago -- Mistletoe makes her way onto the sunflower-seed-hull carpet. Within seconds she snuffles up an unopened seed, rises onto her haunches, and with her front paws rotates the flattish seed until it's right for biting into. Instantly her sharp incisors split the seed coat, the pale kernel plops onto her tongue, and the two seed-coat halves drop unnoticed onto the ground, adding themselves to the ever-deepening carpet.
Such is our squirrel's appetite that even as her cheek-teeth grind the sunflower kernel into oily pulp, she searches for another seed. She finds one, eats it, and then finds another and another. And now the snowflakes are smaller than before, but coming down much harder, and the wind blows leaves across the lawn. Hey...! Dark images among snowflakes, something fast-moving, maybe something dangerous... Ears laid back, eyes wide with panic, tail jerking, in an instant Mistletoe is back on the Sugar Maple's trunk, poised to escape even higher... But... False alarm. Only a noisy flock of House Sparrows streaking around the house's corner, then settling into the Privet hedge. Nothing to worry about. Once the heart slows enough for our squirrel to think, back onto the ground and the seed-hull carpet she goes.
Soon the whole backyard fills with the hissing noise of millions and millions of small, dry snow-pellets showering onto frozen ground. The pellets bounce into Mistletoe's eyes and onto her sensitive whiskers, and wedge themselves in her fur. Now entire trees shudder and sway in the wind and the snow comes in fast-moving waves. All this sound and commotion fills Mistletoe with an urge to find shelter, to be someplace quiet and familiar, to be in her home... Up the big Sugar Maple's trunk she goes, then through the limb-maze, then the big leap, the run along the gutter and finally with a short hop she lands on the cable-TV wire leading from the Alexanders' house.
At first the going is easy but away from the house's shelter, above Chesterfield Avenue, Mistletoe encounters slippery ice encrusting the wire, and now the wind rages with anger and spite. Too late Mistletoe understands that her claws are no good on ice-glazed wire. Too late she comprehends that in this wind it's impossible to turn around and go back. For a long time Mistletoe hugs the swaying cable, the furious wind whistling around the wire, growing ever stronger, blowing snow stinging her eyes. Finally, very slowly, she begins pulling herself forward. What else can she do? How she wants to turn back. But, there's just no... Arrrrrrgh!
Thirty feet above Chesterfield Avenue's pavement, a mighty blast of tail-twisting wind rips our squirrel from the wire. Like a helpless gray rag she's carried for long seconds suspended in nothing but angry wind, blowing all the way onto Mrs. Taylor's lawn. Oof! Her bushy tail saves her. Like a small parachute it carried her sideways in the wind, from over the highway, to land her rolling then sprawling on Mrs. Taylor's grass. A thin-tailed cat or a big dog wouldn't have survived this fall but our Mistletoe is just shaken.
Now more than a little shaken our squirrel streaks toward home.Soon Mistletoe feels beneath her paws the old Hackberry tree's familiar, warty bark. Up, up, up she climbs, all the way to the den-hole beneath the big, horizontal branch. She is upset and desperately needs to be with her den companions. How she needs the security and safety of home!
The instant Mistletoe pokes her head into the den-hole's darkness, she feels better, smelling familiar odors. Inside the old Hackberry the den is shaped like a ten-foot-long teardrop that's narrow at the top but ample and flat-bottomed below. Pulling herself down the den's narrow neck, Mistletoe feels the ridge of hard, smooth wood pressing against her back, and dry, crumbly heartwood sliding beneath her belly, and these familiar sensations calm and please her. Reaching the den's bottom, her companions' odors blossom around her. Just by sniffing she knows that all the other squirrels are here.
Chickweed and Blacklocust smell dry and warm, but Cocklebur's scent is that of a wet and upset squirrel, so the storm had caught him outside, too. Yes, all the feelings and aromas and sounds of home are here, and they are good... Now inside the den floor's darkness Mistletoe curls into a ball that touches all the other balls of gray fur there, and exchanges feelings, warmth and odors with them. Before our squirrel sleeps, more than once she chuckles softly, and contentedly sighs.
FEBRUARY (The Chase) Mistletoe pokes her muzzle into winter's brown leaf litter sniffing for acorns. However, even before she snuffles up her first snack, along comes Cocklebur. Cocklebur has followed Mistletoe all the way from the de+. Now he's hanging on the Sugar Maple's trunk but he's not glancing from side to side looking out for danger. In fact, he doesn't even seem interested in chasing our squirrel from the acorn-finding place, which is exactly what he usually does.
No, Cocklebur simply hangs on the trunk, gazing at Mistletoe as if she had three heads! Mistletoe doesn't understand. In Peace Hill's squirrel community, Cocklebur is a higher-ranked squirrel than she, for in the past whenever there's been a tail- flicking, growling, and foot-stomping spat, he's always been the winner. It's only natural that right now Cocklebur should chase Mistletoe from the good eating place. Therefore, what's he doing just hanging there looking all goggly-eyed?
For almost a minute Cocklebur stays there with that funny look on his face, sniffing the cold air. Then he bounds onto the ground and, somewhat like a cat sneaking up on a mouse, begins slinking toward Mistletoe. Our squirrel doesn't at all understand what's happening. However, she does know that she's hungry, and that Cocklebur isn't really threatening her, so she just keeps foraging for acorns. And all he while Cocklebur creeps toward her, slowly and deliberately, curiously flicking his tail in short, nervous jerks... When he gets close, Mistletoe doesn't stop feeding. She doesn't know what to make of all this; maybe if she just ignores him... But before Mistletoe can forget the crazy-acting Cocklebur, he's sneaked around behind her, gingerly poked his nose beneath her tail, and taken a nice deep whiff!
Outraged and confused, huffily Mistletoe scrambles into the Privet hedge. At a leisurely pace, his tail slowly and curiously waving in the air, Cocklebur follows her. Something his expression says that he'd like nothing more in the whole wide world than to take at least one more whiff... Though Cocklebur doesn't see where Mistletoe has escaped to, he smells her trail. In fact, Mistletoe's odor is something of which Cocklebur simply cannot get enough.
Fairly nonchalantly now he follows our squirrel's scent to a rock where seconds earlier Mistletoe had paused. He touches his nose there, and inhales. As Mistletoe's soul-pleasing, feminine odor blossoms all through his slightly dizzy head a shudder-causing thrill flushes through his body. Catching a glimpse of Mistletoe climbing high into the Elm tree, Cocklebur begins moving toward the tree's trunk, grandly waving his high-held tail. From the far side of the feeding station, the young, low-ranked male squirrel called Hawthorn notices that a little chase is shaping up so he decides to join it. When Cocklebur clambers up the elm's trunk, Hawthorn tags along behind him. Hawthorn also seems to consider this just a half-hearted chase, not anything serious, just a chase after a female.
Several times the two male squirrels catch Mistletoe but each time when they try to sniff beneath her tail she angrily rushes away. Sometimes after her escapes the males pause to sniff the tree bark upon which she has sat.******Cocklebur, Hawthorn, Loblolly, Buckeye, Blacklocust and the old squirrel called Ginkgo... By noon all these male squirrels are pursuing Mistletoe and the pace of the chase has changed. Now they come after her as if they mean to catch her! Moreover, Mistletoe herself now experiences feelings she's never known. Something new is cooking inside her -- something she can't understand, and something she isn't sure how to handle. On the one hand, never has she been more upset with her fellow squirrels. On the other, somehow this crazy chase is kind of nice... And, those males...!
One time this morning Hawthorn found a spot on a Black Oak's limb where earlier Mistletoe had rested and more than just sniff the spot he actually gnawed at the crumbly bark, seeming to get drunk as Mistletoe's odor filled his head! Blacklocust hadn't behaved much better.
During one hotheaded moment when he was leaping from one branch to another he'd misjudged the distance and tumbled twenty-five feet into a Forsythia bush. He became so upset that in anger he'd bitten the Forsythia's innocent branches. Then he'd raged across the lawn noisily expressing a buzzy complaint. "Aaarghhhh!"...is more or less what Mistletoe says when she discovers herself cornered in the crotch of a White Ash tree. She really wants to rest now but those pesky males just won't let her! And now Cocklebur, Hawthorn and the others are coming closer and closer... "Aaarghhh!"she screams again. With a wild look in her eyes, Mistletoe gapes wide her mouth and snarls. Seeing her sharp teeth, finally the fellows understand that this lady is not simply playing hard-to-get.
They decide to kill some time loitering among the tree's branches. Maybe later Mistletoe will cool down. Maybe later she'll let them come closer. With the males orbiting around her, Mistletoe's conflicting feelings confuse her more and more. However, once she's rested, something inside her tells her to start running again, and so she does.
Up one of the elm's branches the bounds, all the males chasing after her. Cocklebur happens to be nearest the branch she climbs so from the beginning he takes the lead. In a couple of minutes -- maybe because Mistletoe is deciding she doesn't want to escape -- Cocklebur catches up with her. Quickly mounting our squirrel from behind, he climbs atop her. Placing his front paws around her ribs just beyond her hips, he squeezes... However, before they can mate, the old male called Ginkgo arrives.
This big fellow with a face scared from many fights lays back his ears, gapes wide his toothy mouth and rushes at Cocklebur, driving him off Mistletoe's back. Cocklebur makes no effort to defend his right to mate with Mistletoe. He simply slinks away before Ginkgo becomes more angry. Cocklebur is a high-ranked squirrel here on Peace Hill, but old Ginkgo is even higher... Unfortunately for old Ginkgo, however, before he can mount his lady-love she bounds away and the whole chase must begin again! The chase, the jockeying for position and the end-of-chase shuffle, with Ginkgo always replacing Cocklebur, and then Mistletoe rushing away.... all this is repeated time and time again.
By mid-afternoon they're all dog-tired and the males are more than a little frustrated, so for a whole twenty minutes they call a truce and rest in the upper limbs of an oak tree. However, when Mistletoe decides to move on, all the males once again rush after her. Blacklocust is the first to abandon the chase. He's the group's lowest-ranking male and during today's chase he's seldom even come close to catching our squirrel. Soon Hawthorn and Loblolly also give up. Then only Cocklebur and Ginkgo are left. No matter how many times Cocklebur is the one to catch Mistletoe, old Ginkgo never lets him mate.
Therefore, finally Cocklebur gives up, too. Maybe on another day he'll have better luck. Maybe other females will smell as good as Mistletoe... And maybe when that happens, this ugly-faced Ginkgo won't be around... Now inside Mistletoe the thing that for a long time has brewed comes to a boil. Now she knows beyond all doubt that of all the males who have chased her today the one who must mate with her is Ginkgo. At the end of the last chase, Ginkgo mounts her, and somehow it seems right. She does not move away. On this day in the third week of February, Mistletoe becomes pregnant. In forty-four days she will bear her first set of young.
There... Maybe five yards from the Black Walnut's trunk and toward the house... Yes, here's the old stump... About a yard behind it... Mistletoe pokes her muzzle beneath a leaf, sniffs deeply but only smells moist, chilly earth. She wedges her entire head between a matted-together clump of leaves and soil. Finding nothing, she rears onto her haunches, looks in every direction for danger, then sniffs beneath a leaf, but finds nothing, nothing, nothing... Finally beneath a decaying, brown Sycamore leaf she detects the faint odor of a buried walnut.
She sniffs a little to the left... Now to the right... Yes! Beneath this leaf a walnut is buried! Working with hard, sharp claws and her mouth, Mistletoe rips through layers of brown tree leaves, decaying wood and dirt until the old walnut, cold and wet, rides securely between her front teeth. Hurrying up the Black Walnut's trunk, she perches six feet high where two big limbs join to form a crotch, a good spot from which she can watch for danger all around as she works. Of course, a walnut's shell is incredibly hard.
However, when Mistletoe was young, for many hours she played with walnut shells, biting them, gnawing on them, learning the shells' fracture zones, the weak spots, and how to chisel and crack them with her teeth. Therefore, now Mistletoe is a walnut-opening expert. Now, just by feeling a walnut's weight in her paws she knows whether it's empty or holds a tasty kernel. And it's a good thing that Mistletoe knows these things, and that last fall she buried her caches of nuts, for now she needs a lot of energy to share with the babies growing inside her.
(continued below)
MISTLETOE:
One Year in the Life of a Gray Squirrel
by Jim Conrad
Read Mistletoe's story month by month...
**********JanuaryFebruaryMarch********** **********AprilMayJune********** **********JulyAugustSeptember********** **********OctoberNovemberDecember**********
JANUARY (The Snow)The big jump, four legs spread wide, tail streaming afterwards... Our squirrel -- her name is Mistletoe -- sails from the Black Oak toward the house, for an instant almost flying through dark, early-morning sky. Landing lightly at the rooftop's lower corner, she silently bounds for a few seconds along the green metal gutter, then leaps into the Sugar Maple.
Scrambling downward through the tree's black maze of leafless branches and twigs, in seconds she reaches the resting spot on the trunk, four feet above the ground.Here she clings, her whole body pressed close to the cold bark, her fuzzy tail pointing straight toward the sky, nothing but fear between her and the sunflower seeds on the ground. For, somewhere inside the hedge of Privet bushes there may be something dangerous hiding, something like a cat which in half a second can rush from the shadows and kill. And as Mistletoe waits, glancing from side to side again and again, all the time she is aware of this: Something in this new day feels strange. The morning's icy air tingles with anticipation. Every wild creature on Peace Hill and in the entire city must smell and taste and feel this troubling something. Even the birds notice it. So busy, so busy, so busy is every bird visiting the Alexanders' feeding station.
The Carolina Chickadees, the Tufted Titmice, the Blue Jays, the House Finches, the Mourning Doves, all stuffing themselves as if never again will they have a chance to eat. How greedily these birds push and peck at one another and nervously flit from spot to spot. The weather is not good. At 8:00 o'clock on this unsettling morning the sky grows darker, not lighter. However, even as Mistletoe clings to the Sugar Maple's trunk, this hard-to-talk-about feeling in the air is crystallizing into something understandable. Yes, out of this fearful-looking sky, carried on bone-chilling breezes that just now are beginning to stir, there begin to fall amazingly large, widely spaced snowflakes. In slow motion they fall, not hurrying to reach the earth at all. Soundlessly they shatter onto the ground, leaving powdery, white splotches that look like teaspoons of white sugar dumped for no good reason. Because the ground is frozen, the snowflake-powder doesn't melt. The Alexanders' backyard is surrounded by a dense Privet hedge and tall trees.
Since Jan, the mother, loves to watch birds from her kitchen window, just outside her window there are two bird feeders and a birdbath. One feeder looks like a basketball-size, four-sided, plastic lantern, and it dangles from a low-arching branch of the big Hackberry. The second feeder is just a wooden tray nailed to a post stuck into the ground. Mistletoe's favorite visiting place is beneath the second feeder. That's because this is where, every morning, Jan scoops out a big heap of store-bought sunflower seeds. As soon as she returns inside Cardinals and Blue Jays swoop down and gorge themselves. But these are messy birds who often knock as many seeds onto the ground as they eat. Therefore, if a squirrel noses into the spongy carpet of empty sunflower-seed hulls that for years has accumulated below the feeder, it's always easy to find a few unopened seeds! And how plump, and oily, and tasty those wonderful sunflower-seed kernels are... All at once Mistletoe leaps onto the ground. Through the falling snow -- it's coming down much harder now than just a minute ago -- Mistletoe makes her way onto the sunflower-seed-hull carpet. Within seconds she snuffles up an unopened seed, rises onto her haunches, and with her front paws rotates the flattish seed until it's right for biting into. Instantly her sharp incisors split the seed coat, the pale kernel plops onto her tongue, and the two seed-coat halves drop unnoticed onto the ground, adding themselves to the ever-deepening carpet.
Such is our squirrel's appetite that even as her cheek-teeth grind the sunflower kernel into oily pulp, she searches for another seed. She finds one, eats it, and then finds another and another. And now the snowflakes are smaller than before, but coming down much harder, and the wind blows leaves across the lawn. Hey...! Dark images among snowflakes, something fast-moving, maybe something dangerous... Ears laid back, eyes wide with panic, tail jerking, in an instant Mistletoe is back on the Sugar Maple's trunk, poised to escape even higher... But... False alarm. Only a noisy flock of House Sparrows streaking around the house's corner, then settling into the Privet hedge. Nothing to worry about. Once the heart slows enough for our squirrel to think, back onto the ground and the seed-hull carpet she goes.
Soon the whole backyard fills with the hissing noise of millions and millions of small, dry snow-pellets showering onto frozen ground. The pellets bounce into Mistletoe's eyes and onto her sensitive whiskers, and wedge themselves in her fur. Now entire trees shudder and sway in the wind and the snow comes in fast-moving waves. All this sound and commotion fills Mistletoe with an urge to find shelter, to be someplace quiet and familiar, to be in her home... Up the big Sugar Maple's trunk she goes, then through the limb-maze, then the big leap, the run along the gutter and finally with a short hop she lands on the cable-TV wire leading from the Alexanders' house.
At first the going is easy but away from the house's shelter, above Chesterfield Avenue, Mistletoe encounters slippery ice encrusting the wire, and now the wind rages with anger and spite. Too late Mistletoe understands that her claws are no good on ice-glazed wire. Too late she comprehends that in this wind it's impossible to turn around and go back. For a long time Mistletoe hugs the swaying cable, the furious wind whistling around the wire, growing ever stronger, blowing snow stinging her eyes. Finally, very slowly, she begins pulling herself forward. What else can she do? How she wants to turn back. But, there's just no... Arrrrrrgh!
Thirty feet above Chesterfield Avenue's pavement, a mighty blast of tail-twisting wind rips our squirrel from the wire. Like a helpless gray rag she's carried for long seconds suspended in nothing but angry wind, blowing all the way onto Mrs. Taylor's lawn. Oof! Her bushy tail saves her. Like a small parachute it carried her sideways in the wind, from over the highway, to land her rolling then sprawling on Mrs. Taylor's grass. A thin-tailed cat or a big dog wouldn't have survived this fall but our Mistletoe is just shaken.
Now more than a little shaken our squirrel streaks toward home.Soon Mistletoe feels beneath her paws the old Hackberry tree's familiar, warty bark. Up, up, up she climbs, all the way to the den-hole beneath the big, horizontal branch. She is upset and desperately needs to be with her den companions. How she needs the security and safety of home!
The instant Mistletoe pokes her head into the den-hole's darkness, she feels better, smelling familiar odors. Inside the old Hackberry the den is shaped like a ten-foot-long teardrop that's narrow at the top but ample and flat-bottomed below. Pulling herself down the den's narrow neck, Mistletoe feels the ridge of hard, smooth wood pressing against her back, and dry, crumbly heartwood sliding beneath her belly, and these familiar sensations calm and please her. Reaching the den's bottom, her companions' odors blossom around her. Just by sniffing she knows that all the other squirrels are here.
Chickweed and Blacklocust smell dry and warm, but Cocklebur's scent is that of a wet and upset squirrel, so the storm had caught him outside, too. Yes, all the feelings and aromas and sounds of home are here, and they are good... Now inside the den floor's darkness Mistletoe curls into a ball that touches all the other balls of gray fur there, and exchanges feelings, warmth and odors with them. Before our squirrel sleeps, more than once she chuckles softly, and contentedly sighs.
FEBRUARY (The Chase) Mistletoe pokes her muzzle into winter's brown leaf litter sniffing for acorns. However, even before she snuffles up her first snack, along comes Cocklebur. Cocklebur has followed Mistletoe all the way from the de+. Now he's hanging on the Sugar Maple's trunk but he's not glancing from side to side looking out for danger. In fact, he doesn't even seem interested in chasing our squirrel from the acorn-finding place, which is exactly what he usually does.
No, Cocklebur simply hangs on the trunk, gazing at Mistletoe as if she had three heads! Mistletoe doesn't understand. In Peace Hill's squirrel community, Cocklebur is a higher-ranked squirrel than she, for in the past whenever there's been a tail- flicking, growling, and foot-stomping spat, he's always been the winner. It's only natural that right now Cocklebur should chase Mistletoe from the good eating place. Therefore, what's he doing just hanging there looking all goggly-eyed?
For almost a minute Cocklebur stays there with that funny look on his face, sniffing the cold air. Then he bounds onto the ground and, somewhat like a cat sneaking up on a mouse, begins slinking toward Mistletoe. Our squirrel doesn't at all understand what's happening. However, she does know that she's hungry, and that Cocklebur isn't really threatening her, so she just keeps foraging for acorns. And all he while Cocklebur creeps toward her, slowly and deliberately, curiously flicking his tail in short, nervous jerks... When he gets close, Mistletoe doesn't stop feeding. She doesn't know what to make of all this; maybe if she just ignores him... But before Mistletoe can forget the crazy-acting Cocklebur, he's sneaked around behind her, gingerly poked his nose beneath her tail, and taken a nice deep whiff!
Outraged and confused, huffily Mistletoe scrambles into the Privet hedge. At a leisurely pace, his tail slowly and curiously waving in the air, Cocklebur follows her. Something his expression says that he'd like nothing more in the whole wide world than to take at least one more whiff... Though Cocklebur doesn't see where Mistletoe has escaped to, he smells her trail. In fact, Mistletoe's odor is something of which Cocklebur simply cannot get enough.
Fairly nonchalantly now he follows our squirrel's scent to a rock where seconds earlier Mistletoe had paused. He touches his nose there, and inhales. As Mistletoe's soul-pleasing, feminine odor blossoms all through his slightly dizzy head a shudder-causing thrill flushes through his body. Catching a glimpse of Mistletoe climbing high into the Elm tree, Cocklebur begins moving toward the tree's trunk, grandly waving his high-held tail. From the far side of the feeding station, the young, low-ranked male squirrel called Hawthorn notices that a little chase is shaping up so he decides to join it. When Cocklebur clambers up the elm's trunk, Hawthorn tags along behind him. Hawthorn also seems to consider this just a half-hearted chase, not anything serious, just a chase after a female.
Several times the two male squirrels catch Mistletoe but each time when they try to sniff beneath her tail she angrily rushes away. Sometimes after her escapes the males pause to sniff the tree bark upon which she has sat.******Cocklebur, Hawthorn, Loblolly, Buckeye, Blacklocust and the old squirrel called Ginkgo... By noon all these male squirrels are pursuing Mistletoe and the pace of the chase has changed. Now they come after her as if they mean to catch her! Moreover, Mistletoe herself now experiences feelings she's never known. Something new is cooking inside her -- something she can't understand, and something she isn't sure how to handle. On the one hand, never has she been more upset with her fellow squirrels. On the other, somehow this crazy chase is kind of nice... And, those males...!
One time this morning Hawthorn found a spot on a Black Oak's limb where earlier Mistletoe had rested and more than just sniff the spot he actually gnawed at the crumbly bark, seeming to get drunk as Mistletoe's odor filled his head! Blacklocust hadn't behaved much better.
During one hotheaded moment when he was leaping from one branch to another he'd misjudged the distance and tumbled twenty-five feet into a Forsythia bush. He became so upset that in anger he'd bitten the Forsythia's innocent branches. Then he'd raged across the lawn noisily expressing a buzzy complaint. "Aaarghhhh!"...is more or less what Mistletoe says when she discovers herself cornered in the crotch of a White Ash tree. She really wants to rest now but those pesky males just won't let her! And now Cocklebur, Hawthorn and the others are coming closer and closer... "Aaarghhh!"she screams again. With a wild look in her eyes, Mistletoe gapes wide her mouth and snarls. Seeing her sharp teeth, finally the fellows understand that this lady is not simply playing hard-to-get.
They decide to kill some time loitering among the tree's branches. Maybe later Mistletoe will cool down. Maybe later she'll let them come closer. With the males orbiting around her, Mistletoe's conflicting feelings confuse her more and more. However, once she's rested, something inside her tells her to start running again, and so she does.
Up one of the elm's branches the bounds, all the males chasing after her. Cocklebur happens to be nearest the branch she climbs so from the beginning he takes the lead. In a couple of minutes -- maybe because Mistletoe is deciding she doesn't want to escape -- Cocklebur catches up with her. Quickly mounting our squirrel from behind, he climbs atop her. Placing his front paws around her ribs just beyond her hips, he squeezes... However, before they can mate, the old male called Ginkgo arrives.
This big fellow with a face scared from many fights lays back his ears, gapes wide his toothy mouth and rushes at Cocklebur, driving him off Mistletoe's back. Cocklebur makes no effort to defend his right to mate with Mistletoe. He simply slinks away before Ginkgo becomes more angry. Cocklebur is a high-ranked squirrel here on Peace Hill, but old Ginkgo is even higher... Unfortunately for old Ginkgo, however, before he can mount his lady-love she bounds away and the whole chase must begin again! The chase, the jockeying for position and the end-of-chase shuffle, with Ginkgo always replacing Cocklebur, and then Mistletoe rushing away.... all this is repeated time and time again.
By mid-afternoon they're all dog-tired and the males are more than a little frustrated, so for a whole twenty minutes they call a truce and rest in the upper limbs of an oak tree. However, when Mistletoe decides to move on, all the males once again rush after her. Blacklocust is the first to abandon the chase. He's the group's lowest-ranking male and during today's chase he's seldom even come close to catching our squirrel. Soon Hawthorn and Loblolly also give up. Then only Cocklebur and Ginkgo are left. No matter how many times Cocklebur is the one to catch Mistletoe, old Ginkgo never lets him mate.
Therefore, finally Cocklebur gives up, too. Maybe on another day he'll have better luck. Maybe other females will smell as good as Mistletoe... And maybe when that happens, this ugly-faced Ginkgo won't be around... Now inside Mistletoe the thing that for a long time has brewed comes to a boil. Now she knows beyond all doubt that of all the males who have chased her today the one who must mate with her is Ginkgo. At the end of the last chase, Ginkgo mounts her, and somehow it seems right. She does not move away. On this day in the third week of February, Mistletoe becomes pregnant. In forty-four days she will bear her first set of young.
There... Maybe five yards from the Black Walnut's trunk and toward the house... Yes, here's the old stump... About a yard behind it... Mistletoe pokes her muzzle beneath a leaf, sniffs deeply but only smells moist, chilly earth. She wedges her entire head between a matted-together clump of leaves and soil. Finding nothing, she rears onto her haunches, looks in every direction for danger, then sniffs beneath a leaf, but finds nothing, nothing, nothing... Finally beneath a decaying, brown Sycamore leaf she detects the faint odor of a buried walnut.
She sniffs a little to the left... Now to the right... Yes! Beneath this leaf a walnut is buried! Working with hard, sharp claws and her mouth, Mistletoe rips through layers of brown tree leaves, decaying wood and dirt until the old walnut, cold and wet, rides securely between her front teeth. Hurrying up the Black Walnut's trunk, she perches six feet high where two big limbs join to form a crotch, a good spot from which she can watch for danger all around as she works. Of course, a walnut's shell is incredibly hard.
However, when Mistletoe was young, for many hours she played with walnut shells, biting them, gnawing on them, learning the shells' fracture zones, the weak spots, and how to chisel and crack them with her teeth. Therefore, now Mistletoe is a walnut-opening expert. Now, just by feeling a walnut's weight in her paws she knows whether it's empty or holds a tasty kernel. And it's a good thing that Mistletoe knows these things, and that last fall she buried her caches of nuts, for now she needs a lot of energy to share with the babies growing inside her.
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