|
Post by Die Fledermaus on Jan 31, 2008 20:05:42 GMT -4
AUGUST (The River)
On Peace Hill, Mistletoe had been an expert at living among such upland trees as Hackberries, Black Walnuts, Black Locusts, Honey Locusts, Red Maples, and American Elms. However, in this woods -- this bottomland woods on the edge of town called Bryant's Woods -- the trees are of species Mistletoe never has seen. Here grow Shagbark and Pignut Hickories, Pin Oaks, White Oaks, Mulberries, Beeches and Black Cherries.
Mistletoe doesn't possess the special talents and knowledge needed to use these particular trees as food. Certainly this woods must harbor fruits, nuts, berries and other things a squirrel can eat; but how does a squirrel who's never seen these things know what's edible?
On this first day of August, Mistletoe's first full day in Bryant's Woods, our squirrel find herself very hungry...Late in the afternoon, Mistletoe discovers a hole in a big Shagbark Hickory. Since it's similar to the Sycamore-den on Peace Hill, for the first time since arriving in this forest she finds herself feeling glad about something. However, the very instant she pokes her head into the hole she smells another squirrel. Then squirrel-paws scrambling on tree-bark are heard. She looks up and sees the old, high-ranked female named Sumac rushing toward her, flicking her tail threateningly. Terrified, Mistletoe races to the forest floor and disappears into the woods.This is just the first of several such incidents, for gradually Mistletoe learns that in this woods all the den trees already are taken by other squirrels. In the end, she settles for a weather-beaten leaf-platform. In it she feels vulnerable and uncomfortable, but she is far too discouraged to repair it.Moreover, on Peace Hill, Mistletoe had known each of her squirrel neighbors. She had been keenly alert to the fact that some squirrels ranked higher than she, and some ranked lower, and always she had conducted her travels and behavior with the strictest attention paid to that ranking. On Peace Hill, Mistletoe had ranked higher than every other squirrel younger than she.However, here, she sees that even squirrels much younger than she hold their tails high and confidently move from place to place, for they know where to hide if danger threatens, and they know where to find food...
Thus even when Mistletoe meets squirrels younger than her own offspring she feels inferior to them... In fact, in this woods, Mistletoe feels inferior to every squirrel.Now come a long series of days, each day feeling like a week or a month to Mistletoe. Though sometimes by luck Mistletoe finds a mushroom, some berries, or maybe a nest with eggs or young birds in it, such finds are rare. As the days pass, our squirrel grows skinny and ratty looking.
She is a low-ranked, cowering, slinking rodent just barely surviving.Sometimes at the edge of the woods Mistletoe perches high in a Cottonwood tree, gazing toward the east, across the open pasture. From here she sees that to the north lies a large field of corn, and to the south there's an even larger field of wheat.
The river flows along the woods's western boundary, so Bryant's Woods is a kind of island surrounded by water and broad open spaces. There in the Cottonwood, Mistletoe yearns to leave Bryant's Woods, to find Peace Hill, or at least somewhere better than here. However, as would be any squirrel, she is terrified of the idea of crossing open fields; for, in open fields, if trouble arises, where is a tree to climb? Days pass, and Mistletoe's yearning to leave only grows.
By the end of August, no longer can Mistletoe bear to stay in Bryant's Woods. At long last desperation and hunger call forth in her a piece of wisdom with which she was born, but which until now she's never used. That wisdom declares this: If on one side of a river life is bad, then swim to the other side...On Bryant's Wood's western side, now Mistletoe thrusts herself into the wide river.It'll be a long swim. With eyes fixed on the opposite shore, Mistletoe swims toward the sun, even as the river's current sweeps her downstream. On and on she paddles, the muscles in her legs and back soon starting to ache. Weak with hunger, soon both her energy and her spirit run low.On and on and on and on and on and on and on... Where is the opposite shore? Water splashing into nostrils... can't keep mouth closed... swallowing water... feeling sick...Out of the eye's corner something floating is glimpsed not far away. It's only a waterlogged piece of driftwood but Mistletoe swims toward it, places her front paws on it, and it barely keeps her head above water as she rests.Long minutes she rests, the river's current carrying her irresistibly downstream, but finally something inside her tells her to swim again, and so she does.
Earlier she swam toward the sun so now she swims toward it again.Now, when an animal lives through terrible moments, sometimes its mind does strange things; the same thing happens with human minds. Thus you must overlook this lapse in Mistletoe's story, for it can only be said that the next thing Mistletoe knows, she is awakening on a muddy bank; she cannot remember how she arrived there.The riverbank's slick, brown mud glistening beneath the noontime sun... head water-clogged and filled with fishy odors and the mud smell... eyes almost swollen shut and caked with mud... very weak... the heat is awful... sick... Mistletoe drags herself to the top of the bank. Growing before her there' a thick, woody stem of a wild grapevine. She pulls herself onto the stem and haltingly, painfully climbs up it.Up, up it goes, up into trees it goes, much higher than she had thought it could. High into the top of a tall Box Elder tree she climbs until finally she finds herself with cool, fresh wind streaming around her. How peaceful is the sound of Box Elder leaves rustling in the afternoon wind.
Here Mistletoe finds the strength and will to groom herself... she rubs, scratches and licks off the disgusting mud.From here Mistletoe can see a long way off. Her Box Elder is one of just three trees rising above dense brush growing along the river's bank. Next to the three trees lies a big field of corn. The cornfield's rows stretch to a dark line of trees half a mile away. The wind makes silvery waves in the ocean of tall corn. Understanding that this little clump of Box Elders is no proper place for a squirrel, Mistletoe glances at the cornfield, then at the distant line of trees, then the cornfield, then the trees...After resting and grooming for most of the afternoon, down the Box Elder's trunk Mistletoe goes. She enters the cornfield and bounds down the alley between two straight, very long rows of corn standing six feet tall.
Now, the open areas between rows of corn deep inside a big cornfield create a strange and in some ways beautiful world. It's fairly easy to travel between the rows, for the land is flat and there are few weeds -- mostly, it's just grayish, naked, shady soil. Flecks of sunlight filter through the canopy of corn leaves and, when the wind blows, sunlight flecks flash on and off all over theoor. The corn's blades are long and slender so they arc above the alley in a graceful, even majestic manner. Above the canopy of green corn blades lies nothing but open blue sky.Through an endless monotony of green cornstalks Mistletoe travels on and on, long traveling down the same alley. Minutes and hours she travels, sometimes resting, constantly yearning for the safety of a tree.
Late in the afternoon turkey vultures fly in circles overhead, coursing lazily on convection currents of hot air rising invisibly above the field. Long, long, long is Mistletoe's journey.Rouuuwww, rouuuwww, rouuuwwwwwwwww...
The male cicada calls for a mate. Hearing this, Mistletoe knows she's nearing the forest, for cicadas call from trees.Chuuuuuuuuuk-duk-duk-duk-duk-duk...The Yellow-billed Cuckoo, a bird that nests in bushes and grapevines is claiming his woodland territory. His call gladdens Mistletoe.Through the sound of rustling corn-blades now Mistletoe hears wind in tall trees; she smells the forest's mustiness and feels its gentle moisture.
The Wood Thrush and the Wood Pewee call, as do the Orchard Oriole and the Carolina Wren. They are all singing, for now the sun touches the horizon, the day's heat is withdrawing, and the forest's animals are perking up after a too-hot afternoon.Mistletoe bounds through a thicket of Cane and then she climbs up the first big tree she encounters. Up, up, up she goes, almost dead with exhaustion but feeling exuberant and glad.
Right off, high in this very first tree, Mistletoe finds a hole that would make a perfect den. Hardly able to believe her good fortune, she approaches the opening and sniffs.But, before she can react to what she smells, she hears something behind her. Turning around she sees the old female called Sumac, coming to chase her away...The river flows in a great curve. In the morning when Mistletoe began swimming, the sun lead her away from the woods to the river's other side. But while resting on the driftwood, she had been carried around the great curve so that when she began swimming toward the sun again, it was in the direction from which she had come. Mistletoe is back in Bryant's Woods...And now to Mistletoe it seems as if no hope remains in the whole world.
September adventures to follow soon. . .
|
|
|
Post by Die Fledermaus on Feb 8, 2008 21:31:18 GMT -4
SEPTEMBER (The Apple)
Pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop... Having never heard this sound, Mistletoe's ears perk straight up. She rears onto her haunches, looks toward the sound, and nervously flicks her scalped tail. Pop pop pop... With the noise growing louder, a Blue Jay issues its alarm call, then flies away. All through Bryant's Woods a thousand animals grow tense and sit unmoving, alert to any danger that may attend this loud, unexpected intruder. Poised like statues, they wait and listen, wait and listen... From Mistletoe's leaf-platform at the woods's edge she sees that the noise comes from an old, green tractor chugging toward the woods from the direction of the farmhouse across the pasture.
The tractor pulls a wagon on which sits a young female human. Once the tractor and wagon draw near the woods, the girl rises and stands on the moving wagon's flat bed. Pop pop pop... Next to the fence between the pasture and the woods, not far from the cornfield's edge, the wagon jerks to a halt; the girl almost loses her balance and she and her father laugh. These are the first human sounds Mistletoe has heard since arriving in Bryant's Woods over a month ago.
From atop her leaf-platform Mistletoe watches the humans with ever-growing curiosity. In contrast to Bryant's Wood's other squirrels, who are confused and very upset by these visitors' arrival, Mistletoe is pleased. The loud humans remind her of happy days on Peace Hill when long ago she was a squirrel with her own family... Now Mistletoe hears the father make his sound: "Well, Joanie, if we're going to cut firewood, we'd better get to work!" "Why don't we just sit for a while and look at things?" the girl asks, only half joking. The father smiles but doesn't reply. He climbs onto the wagon, picks up a chainsaw and hops across the fence. Placing the chainsaw on the ground he then bends over and draws several times on the starter-rope. Grrrngrrrrrrrrrrrrr...
The chainsaw's noise is much louder than even Mistletoe was prepared for, so she crouches low in her leaf-platform. Elsewhere three Blue Jays scream their danger signals and a fox in its hollow-log den holds its breath; a Kingbird escapes to the far side of the forest and a rabbit hurries deep into a dense Blackberry thicket. Holding the chainsaw at waist level the man cuts into a hickory-tree's trunk. It's Sumac's hickory... the very den-hickory from which Mistletoe was chased on the first day. Now pale yellow sawdust snows onto the ground and before long Mistletoe smells the sharp odor of freshly cut hickory-wood. A nervous shudder shoots through her body. The man cuts a large wedge from one side of the tree's trunk and then saws toward the cut from the trunk's opposite side.
Within three minutes a loud cracking sound echoes through the forest, the old hickory leans, and the man steps to one side; then with a tremendous groan and an ear-splitting snap the whole tree topples, crashes through other trees' limbs, and, in a storm of ripped-off leaves and twigs, collapses onto the forest floor. "Bull's eye!" the man yells, slapping his leg in satisfaction. "It fell right where I'd hoped it would... !" Now the chainsaw silently lies on the ground and both humans walk along the fallen tree's trunk. They talk to one another: "That trunk is holler most of the way up," the man observes, "but it's got good, solid branches. We'll cut the branches into sections and leave the trunk here to rot." "It's a shame we had to cut such a pretty tree... " the girl replies with a sad voice. "Now, ain't you the one always a-wanting to barbecue meals using hickory wood, and don't you look forward just like me to a big fire during the cold months? This old hickory ain't doing nobody no good just standing here. It's our tree and we might as well get some use from it."
For over an hour the man chainsaws the hickory's branches into two-foot sections of firewood. He tosses the logs across the fence onto the wagon and the girl stacks them neatly in a pile on the wagon's bed. Soon Mistletoe grows accustomed to the commotion. She descends to a fork in her tree for a better view, gets comfortable, and starts her morning's grooming. The forest's other animals, not at all used to having humans nearby, remain under cover, watching, waiting, very fearful of what might happen next. When the humans finish their work and prepare to leave, the girl spots something in the grass near the hollow trunk. "Daddy, look!" Having tumbled from the den-hole during the big hickory's fall, it's one of Sumac's three-week old nestlings. Its eyes are only partially open and its body only thinly covered with fur. "Daddy, can I keep it?" When at last the tractor and wagon return to the pasture's far side, the forest's birds and squirrels come out to look at what has been done. Skunks, raccoons, opossums, and the fox will survey the damage when darkness comes.
It is not known what happened to Sumac and her remaining three babies, for they had been in the den of the old hickory when it fell, and the tree landed with its den-hole against the ground. Neither can it be told what will happen to the baby squirrel who fell from the den. It's needs are very specific -- it needs Sumac's milk. And it needs to live wild in the forest. ****** While her father had worked with the chainsaw, the girl had thrown something onto the ground next to the cornfield.
Of all the animals in the woods who saw this, only to Mistletoe had it been an event important enough to remember. It reminded her of the many times she had seen humans toss garbage into the green trash-can on Peace Hill. Thus, no sooner than the humans are out of sight, Mistletoe climbs down her tree to look for the girl's discarded thing, hoping it might be a greasy corn-chip, or maybe an oily French-fry with tomato ketchup on it, or maybe even a crumbly Twinkie. Yes! An apple core. Mistletoe has eaten this kind of food before; her spirits soar.
Greedily stuffing the core into her mouth, she rushes with it into the lower branches of a Catalpa tree at the woods' edge. But even before Mistletoe begins gnawing on the core, Wahoo comes climbing up the Catalpa's trunk, expecting to have the food for himself. Wahoo is an aggressive, year-old male who more than once has chased Mistletoe from food and good perches.
However, this time Wahoo is in for a surprise. He remembers Mistletoe as an inferior, cowering, insecure individual who runs from any threat at all. But now something new is going on inside our squirrel's head. Having this apple core reminds her of an earlier time when she enjoyed plenty of food, and when it had been she who knew where all the good hiding places and trails were, and she who had been of a higher social rank than most other squirrels. In those days, if a young squirrel like Wahoo came along, it would be she who flicked her tail in defiance and as a warning, and he would have run away! Stopping on a limb three feet from Mistletoe,
Wahoo looks covetously at the apple core in Mistletoe's mouth and flicks his tail threateningly. However, to his vast surprise, our squirrel does not drop the prize and run away. Wahoo watches as Mistletoe gnaws on her core, looking Wahoo straight in the eye, and giving the impression that she's deciding that this impudent young male is hardly worth worrying about.
Behind Mistletoe, for the first time in Bryant's Woods, a stiff, deformed tail stiffens with unmistakable resoluteness; and now she flicks it. Getting the message, Wahoo turns and bounds away. Clearly, times have changed. Now Mistletoe outranks at least one other squirrel in Bryant's Woods... ******While Mistletoe finishes eating the apple core, the old, high-ranked male whose name is Cypress comes into the area, traveling on the forest floor below Mistletoe's tree. It's lucky for Mistletoe that earlier it had been Wahoo who wanted the apple core, and not Cypress, because for huge, aggressive Cypress, Mistletoe would have dropped the core and run. Slowly, with the bearing of a squirrel who knows that he is king of the woods, old Cypress passes through the bushes at the forest's edge, saunters across a small corner of the pasture and enters the cornfield. He chooses an eight- foot tall, green corn-plant and climbs up its stalk. Mistletoe has no idea at all what Cypress is doing, so she watches his every movement.
Midway up the corn stalk an ear of half-ripe corn juts from the stalk. With his back paws firmly grasping the stalk, Cypress takes the ear of corn into his front paws and teeth, tears away the ear's green shucks, and gnaws the exposed, juicy, yellow kernels... Mistletoe hardly believes her eyes! If corn can be eaten right off the stalk, then in this huge field there must be enough food to keep a squirrel from hunger forever! Without waiting for Cypress to open a second ear, Mistletoe scrambles down the Catalpa's trunk and bounds toward the cornfield. Soon she, too, is opening with her claws and teeth the shucks that envelope a juicy ear of corn. Of course, for the inexperienced Mistletoe, the shucks do not part from over the kernels as easily as they do for Cypress.
Nonetheless, it's not long before Mistletoe is filling her stomach with sweet, fresh corn. And this is just the first of many such ears of corn that she will enjoy. On this September morning, on the same day the humans cut down Sumac's den- hickory, it looks as though Mistletoe's luck may be changing for the better...
October adventures to follow later!
|
|
|
Post by Die Fledermaus on Feb 22, 2008 14:46:57 GMT -4
OCTOBER (The Visitor)
Mistletoe, Wahoo, Cypress, Coralberry, Tupelo, Aster, Fescue, Sweetgum, Foxtail, Mimosa, Pawpaw, Mayapple and Mayapple's four six-week-old babies... During dry, crisp, blue-skied October, these are the squirrels living in Bryant's Woods. And now Mistletoe is an accepted part of Bryant's Woods' squirrel society. She is no longer just the hungry outcast. Since the apple-core incident with Wahoo and the discovery of corn, Mistletoe has regained enough confidence to challenge other squirrels beside Wahoo. Now she ranks higher than Wahoo, Tupelo, Fescue and Pawpaw. And when Mayapple's nestlings become full members of the community, Mistletoe will rank higher than them, too.
Not long after Mistletoe discovered corn, the woods itself had begun producing its autumnal harvest. Gradually she had developed skills for finding and opening beechnuts, nuts of the Shagbark and Pignut Hickories, and the tiny, hard acorns of Pin Oak... Now each day Mistletoe eats her fill; now she keeps busy burying nuts in the ground.
These days, leaves turn colors and fall to the ground. On the first sunny afternoon after the first night of heavy frost, each breeze brings hundreds of tree-leaves swirling toward the forest floor in avalanches of bright color. Falling, the leaves sound like rushing water in a stream -- but always the afternoon air smells dry and crisp.
Even the birds avalanche through Bryant's Woods. Now many species migrate southward toward lands where hard winters never come. Bay-breasted Warblers, Black-throated Green Warblers, Tennessee Warblers, Brown Creepers, Red-eyed Vireos... all moving south for the winter. Early one morning when white fog lies more densely upon the fields than ever Mistletoe has seen it, our squirrel is surprised to see the male human from the farmhouse silently emerging from the fog and entering the woods.
Carrying something long and slender, slowly he passes through the forest, then squats at the base of a big Blackgum tree. All the squirrels who see him flick danger signals with their tails. Some race into their dens or leaf-platforms while others station themselves on the hidden side of their tree's trunk. In the city often Mistletoe has seen humans walking alone early in the morning and she knows how sometimes they pause and rest; now she cannot understand why the other squirrels seem so upset. However, she takes the cue from them and positions herself on her tree trunk's hidden side.
Minutes pass. The sun rises higher and the fog begins to lift. A few birds sing, and from time to time a slight breeze sends red and yellow Red Maple leaves floating earthward. Mistletoe, more or less forgetting about the man who has entered the forest, climbs into a fork in her tree and begins grooming. One by one, other squirrels also leave their hiding places; one or two groom and forage in treetops.
Blam!
Tupelo, the squirrel nearest the almost-forgotten human, falls thirty feet onto the forest floor, landing only a few feet from where the human sits, the shotgun in his hand still smoking. The wounded squirrel screams and raises himself onto his front paws. The rear half of his body is paralyzed and limp but with his front legs he tries to drag himself toward the nearest tree. Casually the squirrel hunter approaches Tupelo, crushes the creature's head with the heel of his boot, picks up the corpse and drops it into a bag slung across his shoulder. Then, passing right beneath Mistletoe who in uncomprehending horror watches from inside her leaf-platform, he walks to the woods's other side. Fifteen minutes later, just as Bryant's Wood's squirrels once again begin feeling secure enough to start foraging, Mistletoe hears two new blasts from the shotgun...
And never again will our squirrel meet among the forest's trees the male called Sweetgum, and the female called Pawpaw.
******
Blam!
A week has passed since the human's last visit. It's a crisp, sunny afternoon and at least an hour has passed since the human walked into the woods. When the shot rings out, Mistletoe is climbing among her tree's branches gathering beechnuts. And this time she is more than just an observer.
Near her face a twig snaps in two, and all around her shotgun pellets whiz through the dry air. But the human is too far away for a good shot and he's simply missed his target. Terrified, Mistletoe rushes into her leaf-platform, crouches low, and quivers in silence. The sky is blue and cicadas on tree limbs make droning sounds in warm, yellow sunlight. Mistletoe hears the man below walking through crisp, crackling, fallen leaves...
Blam!
Tatters of mangled leaves spray Mistletoe's face as shotgun pellets rage through her leaf-platform. A pellet splits one of the twigs serving as the platform's foundation, sending wooden splinters shooting into one of Mistletoe's paws. A pellet of her mouth to just beneath an eye. Another pellet enters the grazes the left side of her head, plowing a bloody trench from the corner flesh between the rib cage and shoulder of her right, front paw, ending its journey only when it jars against her shoulder blade. And a pellet severs two toes from her back, left pa.w
The pellet that grazes her head leaves our squirrel stunned and unable to think. Mistletoe does not even hear when the hunter reloads his shotgun and takes potshots at three other leaf nests. Sometimes in the past he's knocked squirrels from their nests with this technique... However, two of the other nests are empty. As the human leaves the woods, walking home across the pasture, it is only Foxtail who lies in his leaf- platform with his spine shattered and his lungs collapsed and useless.
Yes, the hunter really had known better than to try to hunt on a sunny afternoon. Mornings when hungry squirrels are awakening and beginning to forage are much better. And only seldom can squirrels be knocked from their nests. But today had been such a beautiful day and really he had wanted a reason to be outside...
Gradually Mistletoe's senses return. Little by little she becomes aware of a world of blue sky above and dry leaves below, and of intense pain. Her shoulder blade has been jarred so hard by the impacting pellet that the muscles, tendons, and nerves around it throb as if her leg were being mercilessly twisted.
For a long time Mistletoe lies here, blue sky above and dry leaves below. A breeze comes along; she hears Red Maple leaves falling onto the forest floor and she feels her nest swaying in the wind. For the rest of the day she lies in her nest, any movement at all sending pain shooting into her shoulder. When evening comes, the coldness causes her pain to increase.
On the morning of the day after being shot, at last she pulls herself to the edge of her nest and peers into the forest below. Her pain is matched by her thirst. Gazing into the forest below, she feels within herself great conflict. On the one hand, it hurts to move in any way; on the other, she absolutely must quench her thirst.
Thirst wins. But as our squirrel leans over the nest's side, weakened by the buckshot, supporting branches give way and the entire nest collapses. Mistletoe grabs at a branch and holds on briefly, but pain causes her to let go. Down, down, down she falls, crashing through dry, colorful leaves and brittle twigs. Then all becomes black. When she awakens on the forest floor she lies in a soft blanket of dry leaves.
With almost unendurable pain Mistletoe drags herself into the cornfield. A few days earlier the man had brought his big machines there and the corn had been harvested. Now the field is brown and filled only with stubble. However, the corn-picker has missed some of the corn ears and now finding corn on the ground is easy. Moreover, it's rained, so water pools in tracks left by the heavy machines.
Mistletoe drinks her fill and then gnaws some corn kernels. When darkness arrives, with great effort she pulls herself back into the woods. She crawls into a thicket of Honeysuckle vines. A rabbit is there. Somehow the rabbit understands that Mistletoe means no harm.
- - - - - - - - - - -
November adventures to follow!
|
|
|
Post by Die Fledermaus on Feb 22, 2008 14:49:39 GMT -4
Well, OK. That last one was tough to read. Very tough. But that is the way things too often are. If you meet a hunter, punch him one for me. In case you are too worried about Misteltoe to continue, here is a spoiler: she survives.
|
|
|
Post by pinky on Mar 10, 2008 1:23:05 GMT -4
Yes, that was a rough one.
I read recently that some high schools are offering hunting classes in hopes of offsetting the dwindling number of hunters.
I taught at one school where students would tell me that they'd be missing class because it was to be the opening day of hunting season.
In some places schools close for that day.
|
|
|
Post by Die Fledermaus on Mar 10, 2008 15:50:53 GMT -4
Another reason to prefer animals to people. Except animal people.
Next month's story soon enough.
|
|
|
Post by Die Fledermaus on Apr 12, 2008 14:01:29 GMT -4
NOVEMBER (The Bucket)
The loss of two toes on the hind paw has not been of critical importance. The gash between her lip and eye has left an ugly scar but now this does not bother her. The front paw has been bruised by the shattering twig but it's no longer painful. The shoulder is the thing that still hurts, and it hurts all the time, day after day. Climbing into trees is out of the question.
In November, Mistletoe is a kind of animal that Bryant's Woods has never seen. Not with a squirrel's graceful leaps and bounds but with the stiff, laboring gait of a lizard, each dawn Mistletoe drags herself into the cornfield. This new, man-created animal no longer lives in the squirrel's world of air, sky, and treetops, but rather in the turtle's world of mud and roots, and brown, decaying leaves. Now she is not sleek-looking, but rather a creature caked with mud, like a frog with brown warts. Now she possesses neither the energy nor the spirit to be like anything other than a snake, suspicious and vulnerable on the ground.
Yes, Mistletoe has become a grubby, half-dead animal who eats waste-corn, living among dead leaves on the forest's floor. Out the window has gone her rank relative to Bryant's Woods's other squirrels. In Mistletoe's life, now there is no tail-flicking and no being chased by males; now all other squirrels simply stay away from her. Mud and corn, mud and corn, mud and corn... even the Blue Jays scream when Mistletoe comes dragging from beneath the Honeysuckle thicket.
One day after a big rain, the farmer's hound comes sniffing. Mistletoe is eating corn in the field so when the hound sees her it runs toward her baying crazily. But this thing the hound approaches doesn't dart away like the fox or amble in retreat like the skunk. It doesn't drop and play dead like the opossum, nor does it bound toward the trees like a squirrel. In fact, this unworldly creature seems not be care whether it's caught or not. The wounded side of Mistletoe's face is puffed up, giving it a crooked, screwed-up look.
When our squirrel realizes that the hound is coming, she tries to run, but the sharp pain in her shoulder causes her to stumble and scream. She tries to leap, but only manages to sprawl awkwardly onto the ground. Seeing this, the hound stops in its tracks, not knowing what to do with such a disfigured, possibly dangerous creature. So the hound simply turns around and skulks away.
Mistletoe has been looking for a better sleeping place than beneath the Honeysuckle thicket. Today she finds one next to the trunk of a Pin Oak near the river; it's a ten-gallon metal bucket lying on its side. The bucket's top has a spout in it large enough for a squirrel to enter, and the bucket itself is dry inside. A few weeks ago a mouse carried straw into it for a nest, but now the mouse is gone. Now this bucket becomes Mistletoe's home. And little does she know that for this new home she must thank the human who shot her. For, this bucket was brought into the woods by the man so that when he hunts he'll have someplace to sit and wait... wait as his squirrel-quarry forget him, and begin showing themselves...
During the nights that follow, more rain than normal falls. Many nights find Mistletoe lying curled in her bucket listening to raindrops drum onto the bucket's metal sides. From inside the bucket the thunder sounds like distant growling or roaring. A corner of the bucket touches the tree's trunk so sometimes when the wind is strongest and the tree's wood creaks and groans, those sounds pass from the tree into the bucket. To our squirrel, it seems as if she lives in the very belly of a forest-sized ache. However, our squirrel no longer grows overly excited about mere creaks and groans. When the rain patters on her roof and the sky roars, she is content to be dry, and to know that a hunger- satisfying cornfield lies nearby.
On Thanksgiving Day, a remarkable thing happens. Much too early in the season, a heavy, wet snow blankets Bryant's Woods. When Mistletoe awakens, though the sun has been up for a couple of hours, inside the bucket there is only darkness. And where are the sounds of wind in trees, and of Dark-eyed Juncos trilling as they forage for Giant Ragweed seeds at the woods's edge? Noticing a dim glow issuing through the spout, Mistletoe draws close and sniffs. Where there should be nothing but air, her snout collides with wet, crunchy snow. She paws at it and a little tumbles into the bucket. In nature, sometimes squirrels dig tunnels beneath snow, looking for cached nuts; the snow-tunneling instinct is something a squirrel is born with so when Mistletoe feels snow beneath her paws, it feels natural to keep on shoving and pushing and digging forward...
As Mistletoe angles her tunnel upward and nears the surface, the snow loosens. The sound of her paws working in the snow acquires a certain hollow tone. When at last the snow's crust collapses, fresh air and brilliant light flood into her tunnel. Mistletoe had not realized how stale the air in her bucket had become; but now it seems that never before has she smelled air so fresh, so wet, and electric -- as exciting as this air now flooding around her. Mistletoe pokes her head from her snow-hole and looks around. What she beholds could not be more different from her usual world of mud and brown leaves. Trees make graceful, delicate silhouettes against the milky sky; how unlike mud-splattered ears of corn and cold puddles of rainwater they are. Breezes shake snow from the branches.
This pure whiteness showers earthward gently, silently, gracefully... From across the snow-covered fields and pastures come crisp and crystalline sounds. At the farmhouse across the pasture, the humans speak to one another: "You'd better come in now, Joanie," a human says. "We're putting that turkey in the oven any minute. And if you keep playing in the snow, you're going to get a cold, and miss a lot of school." Later, wind will bring the odor of woodsmoke from the farmhouse's direction. It'll be smoke with a Hickory odor.
The conclusion, the December adventures, will follow soon. . .
|
|
|
Post by Die Fledermaus on May 27, 2008 22:02:40 GMT -4
And we at long last come to the conclusion of this year in the life of our squirrel. DECEMBER (Drifting) For most of autumn and early winter, the weather has acted crazy. Since Thanksgiving Day no more snow has fallen, but the rain seems never to end. For the most part, Mistletoe now is healed. Though still unable to jump from limb to limb or climb among a tree's most slender branches, now at least she can climb to the fork of a nearby Red Maple's trunk, and perch there like a real squirrel. Besides eating corn from the cornfield, now she can dig and eat nuts that earlier she cached. Each night she sleeps curled in her bucket at the base of the Pin Oak tree. In the predawn hours of this particular morning -- on the day referred to by humans as Christmas Eve -- outside the bucket there is nothing but darkness, rain and wind. And now, Mistletoe feels her bucket move... Of course, during the whole month Mistletoe has been living here, never has her bucket moved. Mistletoe lies in the darkness, her muscles taut and her mind alert, the sound of rain splattering upon her bucket. However, nothing more happens. Just rain and wind and darkness. Eventually our squirrel sleeps again. The next time the bucket moves, it's a much more violent lurch. The end with the spout on it tilts toward the sky and Mistletoe finds herself lying against what always has been her back wall! Raindrops pepper through the spout. Mistletoe's only thought is to escape. Taking hold of the spout's rim with the claws of her front paws she stretches toward the opening. But just as her head and shoulders pass through the hole, the entire bucket tips forward and Mistletoe feels the front half of her body plunged beneath the surface of ice- cold water! Frantically she withdraws back into the bucket, causing the vessel to tip back to its former position, with the opening toward the sky. Two inches of frigid water now pool inside the bucket. Mistletoe's warm, dry den no longer exists. Huddling quivering and confused in the darkness at the bottom of her bucket Mistletoe's keen sense of balance tells her that the bucket is rotating round and round, and bobbing up and down. Again Mistletoe tries to exit through the spout, but again the bucket tips over. Withdrawing the second time, in the bucket's bottom she now finds four inches of icy water! Certain substances emit stronger odors when wet than when dry. That's the way it is now with the rusty insides of Mistletoe's bucket. Now the penetrating odor of rust once again sickens Mistletoe and fills her with unspeakable terror. It's the same odor as the metal slinky-toy in the Alexanders' attic, and the rusty insides of the garbage truck's holding area. Fear and sadness and aching cold, and the oppressiveness of the odor of rust saturate every pour of Mistletoe's soul and body. When at last the milky glow of dawn lights up the spout-hole in the bucket's "ceiling," Mistletoe once again pulls herself upwards. This time, however, she does not try to draw herself all the way outside; she just pokes her head from the hole and looks around. No forest, no pasture, and no open cornfield. Only muddy water... The previous night the river had risen from its banks and flooded Bryant's Woods; beneath Mistletoe's bucket the water had pooled deeper and deeper until the bucket had floated upright. On stormy floodwater the bucket had sailed through and out of Bryant's Woods. Now, surrounded by uprooted trees, driftwood, corncobs, and a thousand unnamable items washed from fields, forests, and riverside garbage-dumps, Mistletoe's bucket is carried down the river on brown, cold, swirling waters. And who can say in what district, county, or state Mistletoe now finds herself? Though in some places the floodwater sweep across low-lying pastures and fields, and in others it swirls through bottomland woods similar to Bryant's Woods, Mistletoe's bucket always keeps to the river's middle current. Sometimes our squirrel peeps from her prison just long enough for her to see that she is passing through completely unfamiliar territory. Seeing this, she lets herself sink back into the icy water inside her bucket -- and let herself be carried even farther downstream, entombed in her latest rusty trap. At noon, on Christmas Eve Day, the rain turns to snow and the wind grows even stronger, whipping up waves that churn the bucket and knock it from side to side. Inside the bucket, Mistletoe's terror grows, because now from time to time when the bucket rises onto a wave's crest the wind catches it, setting it on its side as it slides into the waves' trough; when the next wave overtops the bucket, water gushes through the spout. Slowly the bucket is sinking. Six inches, seven inches, nine inches... and all the time, inside the bucket, Mistletoe floats in her own river of sadness. As darkness approaches on Christmas Eve Night, the snow continues and the wind does not lay. Now water inside the bucket pools a foot deep and Mistletoe has given up trying to look outside. Suddenly an especially large wave raises the bucket so high that when it slides into the following wave-trough it plunges completely beneath the water's surface. Mistletoe finds herself choking, suspended within a watery, swirling, gurgling fountain of upward escaping bubbles... Breaking the river's surface, she breathes icy, snow-filled air; she is so cold and numb that instead of trying to swim, she just floats with the river's current, barely paddling enough to keep her snout above the water. However, even Mistletoe's luck isn't all bad. This meager swimming is enough to bring her into view of the river's bank, only feet away through the falling snow. Half dead and only half willing to save herself, Mistletoe swims toward the bank. As if her body had turned to lead she pulls herself onto the slick mud. The odor of mud, in the cornfield so recently a hated smell, now smells safe and even a little hopeful. Within moments the brutal, snow-laden wind casts a thin crust of ice upon Mistletoe's fur. A weaker squirrel would not survive. Yet Mistletoe now pulls herself up the steep, snow-mantled bank, crawls through a dense thicket of weeds and shrubs, and steps onto a paved, quiet, snow-covered suburban street. As if some kind of unseen force were pulling her forward, she runs down the street's center, and keeps running past one intersection and then another. Because of the snow, there's hardly any traffic at all, so nothing keeps our squirrel from racing on and on. Finally the street climbs steeply up a hill. At the top, the street ends in a turn-around, but Mistletoe keeps going, passing first through a yew hedge and then across a small, grassy lawn. As she bounds toward her unknown destination very slowly she realizes that now she is in a place very similar to Peace Hill. Yes, what memories are stirred by these sounds of rumbling traffic out in the city, jets taking off at the airport, and the neighbors' barking dogs! Silhouetted against the pale, snowy night-sky, a great White Oak stands beside a house. It's the only tree around and it grows not far from one of the house's windows. From the window radiates an orange glow and this light frightens Mistletoe at first, yet such is her desire to climb into the tree that she rushes toward the oak's trunk and climbs. It's perfect. About ten feet off the ground, there's a cavity in the oak's trunk, and it's not marked with the odor of another squirrel. Inside she finds a dry, spacious den. Never has Mistletoe known such a perfect den. Mistletoe's hours of being inside the bobbing bucket have created inside her a kind of nervousness -- a restlessness and a tension -- that just lying in the bottom of the dark, quiet den cannot relieve. Thus even before she dries and licks the mud from her fur she climbs back to the den's entrance and looks through the hole. She finds herself with a perfect view into the window from which orange light comes. Inside, humans sit around a fireplace while orange flames rise from burning longs. Watching through the window as large snowflakes fall around her, she becomes almost hypnotized. Never has our squirrel seen fire! It's something that moves and moves, yet never goes away or comes closer... Somehow, watching the flames calms down Mistletoe. Soon she withdraws into her den and sleeps more soundly than she has for many, many weeks. "Edna, there's a squirrel out here." A human makes its noise. It's a male human, standing on the house's patio. The door behind him opens and another human appears. Mistletoe is not afraid. "Poor thing!" the new human says. "What's happened to its tail?" "Probably a dog got it or something." "Do you think we can get it to stay?" "If we put up that feeder the Taylors got you for Christmas, it just might!" Watching from the horizontal limb beneath the den's entrance, Mistletoe sees the humans drive a stake into the ground and then place a large bird feeder atop it. Then with immense satisfaction she sees the female human fill the feeder with millet and canary seed and then pour onto the snow a large bag of sunflower seeds. As soon as the humans return inside, Mistletoe descends the trunk of her White Oak, stamps her feet, and bounds into the middle of the heap of seeds. Inside the house the humans watch from the window through which the night before Mistletoe had beheld the orange fireplace flame. And so, on this Christmas Day, a tradition begins that during upcoming years will be repeated time and time again. Feeding the wild animals will become something the people in this house do for the rest of their lives. And Mistletoe is the first of many, many different kinds of animals that will find satisfaction and a full stomach at this new feeding station on Hope Hill.- - - - - - - Best wishes to our beloved squirrel as she continues her life. And thanks to Mr. Conrad for an excellent story that is both empathetic and instructive.
|
|
|
Post by pinky on May 29, 2008 23:46:40 GMT -4
I finally caught up with the reading! Feeding squirrels is not something that anyone does deliberately around here. They have been destructive, and my landlords despise them. I am lucky that I get to keep my feeder, because though the squirrels can't get to any substantial food they hang around and try to. At times my landlord traps squirrels in a humane trap and releases them miles away. I always worry that a family unit is being disrupted. But back to the story. . . . yes, empathetic and instructive. I appreciated the distraction. . . . I cleaned up some Fuzz-related stuff and ended up in tears.
|
|
|
Post by Die Fledermaus on May 30, 2008 0:08:56 GMT -4
Sorry again about Fuzz. Princess, my most cared for hamster, had her CT2 cage, but it is still in use with Celeborn in there. Others have been using it since she died in September of '03, such as Maggie. She sort of stays with me that way. I'd never get rid of that cage even if I had no hamsters.
As for the squirrel. when I finished The Story of Mistletoe I was a little teary-eyed.
Discourage squirrels from staying somewhere? Ultrasonic device. Simple. Easier. Pass the word.
Mr. Conrad, the author, and I had a nice little e-talk about all this. He wrote it long ago. he did something like it about a bird, which I need to check out soon. And I will. But not tonight!
|
|