SQUIRREL TALES: 7
by Mary Lee Corlett
PILE ONE: THE WAKING HOUR
Leaves. They were what I saw when, snuggled in our
nest, I finally opened my eyes for the very first time. I remember that I decided I’d better open
them because I was being poked.
Repeatedly. Annoyingly. “Nutmeg! Stop that!”
“Hey,” came a small voice out of
the darkness. “Don’t blame me because you rolled onto a thorn!”
“A Thorn? How did that get in here?” The second disembodied voice belonged to my
mother. “Oh My!”
I heard the rustling, then came
the muttering, and then more rustling, crunching, and shaking. “There!” she said triumphantly as she pulled
out the offending projectile, tumbling me head over tail in the process. “Oh yeah, much better,” I thought. “Now it’s only scratchy.” I managed to roll back off my tail and drift
back to sleep. It wouldn’t be long
before I would be flipping and tumbling without mother’s expert help. But for now—sleep.
Hazel stretched her cramped hind legs,
and looked over to see that Nutmeg was still sleeping. She and her sister were a little more than
three months old, still young enough to be living in their mother’s nest but
that was sure to be changing soon. Their mother had noiselessly slipped out a
little while ago to begin foraging for breakfast. So now it was Hazel’s turn to creep out
quietly, so as not to disturb her sister—she did this as much to preserve her
own moment of peace and quiet as for Nutmeg’s sake. The oak tree her mother had chosen for
nesting was located in the far back corner of the yard, and so Hazel’s usual
perch on the branch just a few steps away from the nest was the perfect
location for surveying her territory.
A short while ago the neighborhood
had been serenely quiet. But the
stillness of the deepest hours of the night—when even the crickets and other
nocturnal insects had given up their night song—always seemed to give way all
at once to chatter, and rustlings, and birdsong. It was the Waking Hour.
The sun was just beginning to
filter through the thick leaves of the backyard treetops, casting broken
shadows on the dewy grass. The dappled
sunlight on the lawn caused the wet droplets on individual blades to glisten
and sparkle. A soft breeze was blowing. A firefly floated by, no glow now though,
just silently adrift on the morning air.
Hazel stretched out on the branch
and looked down on the tall wood fence that bordered the backyard on three
sides. A Boxel House formed the fourth
side of the rectangle that completely enclosed the yard. Along the fence a variety of shrubs, trees,
and flowers were planted in wide, mulched beds.
And in the center of the yard there was a grassy lawn, which was kept
cut quite short, although why the Boxels particularly wanted it that way Hazel
wasn’t really sure. But it had its
advantages to the yard inhabitants, because tall grass would have provided
additional cover for the neighborhood cats, one of whom Hazel now saw was
lurking about, oh so casually sunning itself on the fence, an intermittent
blink of its eye or a sporadic twitch of its ear the only indication that it
was actually quite awake, just waiting for the opportunity to spring one final
trap on a distracted mouse or an unsuspecting chickadee.
Hazel knew, as did the cat, that
the bird families had already been up for hours, mostly hidden in the trees,
but chattering and chirping across the backyard fences. Hazel sat up with a start as she realized
that the cat was about to be granted its fondest wish. On the lawn just a few feet in front of the
cat’s watchful eye, there was a sudden flit of wings as a sparrow popped down
into the grass to begin the hunt for something good to eat for breakfast.
The breeze picked up, only for an
instant but it gently rustled through the trees, shaking loose a twig with
several leaves attached and sending it softly to the ground. The bird turned to check it out, just in case
a juicy bug had ridden down with it, like a surfer on a wave. But not this
time. It was a good thing she had looked
behind her though, because it was then that she saw the cat, and she flew away
in an instant. With that, the cat, now apparently tired of the waiting game,
stretched with a lazy nonchalance and then leapt to the other side of the fence
and disappeared.
The birds were not the only ones
already gossiping and feeding and going about their daily business. A chipmunk was darting around and behind the
ferns and the boxwoods, disappearing in a small brown blur as quickly as he
appeared. A rabbit, too, sat cautiously
in the middle of the lawn, ears twitching almost imperceptibly, nose sniffing,
waiting, until she was sure it was safe to venture forward, her hops small and
tentative.
“Tailed Ya!” With a rebel yell
Nutmeg launched herself from behind her sister directly onto Hazel’s tail,
giving it a firm tug before she took off running for the higher branches,
laughing and screaming as she went.
“Oh! No you don’t!” Hazel countered as she, too, let out a
screech and sprang into action. Hazel
had been so absorbed in her observations of the activities below that she
completely missed the fact that her sister had awakened and had been sneaking
up behind her. It wasn’t often that her
sister had the advantage in a game of “Pin the Tail” and Hazel didn’t like it
one bit! She twisted around and flew up
the tree in Nutmeg’s wake, but Nutmeg, sensing her own peril, suddenly bounded
sharply to the left, setting an oak leaf cluster in motion, which smacked Hazel
on the nose. They jumped right, dashed left, sprang up, and dove down,
criss-crossing from one sprawling oak branch to another until they were both
exhausted and lay panting back where they had started—directly in front of
their nest. The Waking Hour was now
officially over.
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