Okay, so here's part I:
SQUIRREL TALES
by Mary Lee Corlett
Acknutedgments
A Tale is a very
important thing to a Squirrel, and from a very young age I have hoarded mine. I have discovered that just about everybody
has a story or two from their life they like to tell over and over again. Shimmy and Digs tend to tell tales as a team,
describing their favorite adventures together, usually full of comic twists
that make me laugh. Diver doesn’t tell
as many tales, but when he does it is never very flattering to Boxels. Dreamer likes anecdotes that reveal his
“artistic process.” But Mrs. Such is
without a doubt the Master Storyteller.
Her tales always have that special…spark.
I owe Mrs. Such for fostering my love of the Tale, and
for helping me to discover the joy of recording the stories of our neighborhood
on these Leaves. Mrs. Such suggested
once that a squirrel’s life is a little like a branch on an ancient poplar
tree. She said each squirrel’s
experiences—a squirrel’s personal stories—are like the leaves on that branch, a
cluster of individual tales, connected but distinct. It takes many branches filled with
leaves—extending, touching, crossing and overlapping, interconnecting and
intersecting—to make a great tree. And
it takes many squirrels and many squirrel stories to make a great tale. So, I want to thank my family and
friends—Mother, Nutmeg, Mrs. Fidget, Mr. Chase, Shimmy and Digs, Dot, Dart, and
Diver for allowing me to collect their special memories and stories to bring
together in these Leaves.
Next, I suppose I should even thank the Boxels, because
if they didn’t run the world as badly as they do, maybe we wouldn’t have become
as clever a species as we are in order to deal with their constant threats to
our society and our well-being, and maybe then we wouldn’t have as many
interesting tales to tell either. Maybe.
My Leaf piles became a Leaf Collection because of my
sister Nutmeg, who can organize a cache like no other squirrel I have ever
known (even though she actually pushed me right into my piles a time or two in
order to do it!)
And finally, this Collection is dedicated to
Dreamer. His creations are the spark
with the power to ignite in us the promise of possibility; they are the light
that shows us both the value and the cost of darkness.
Hazel
0003rd Spring
FOLIO I: TELLING TALES
BUNDLE ONE: LEAVES
I have been writing most of my life, but my Squirrel
Tales actually came together in part because of a DOG! “The cat will mew,
and dog will have his day!” *
Mother did warn me of that more than once. Sometimes I hate it when Mother is right.
Hazel bolted across the yard in the driving rain, skidding
and sliding on the rain-slick grass as she leapt from the lawn to the trunk of
the oak tree and bounded up into the safety of its upper branches. “How did HE get free?” she exclaimed as she ran,
“I can’t believe it! He almost had me!”
“He” was Black Dog, who lived with the Boxels in their Boxel
House that sat in the middle of Hazel’s yard.
And although she was at this moment having second thoughts about it,
Hazel had long ago made it her mission to annoy Black Dog every chance she
got. Up until now it really hadn’t
involved much risk, because he had always been confined in some way. He was always either on The Leash or, more
often, trapped inside the Boxel House, safely contained behind the see-through
door that only the Boxels could open and close for coming and going. So when Black Dog suddenly came charging at
her from across the front of the Yard—and in the pouring rain, too—just as she
was coming out of the maple tree, she was so shocked that for a split second
she actually froze in place. Of course,
that was not the best survival strategy.
So in an instant she gathered her wits and, as any self-respecting
squirrel would do, she hit the ground running!
Safe from both storm and dog in her oak tree now, Hazel
climbed to her nesting branch deep within the canopy and then shook herself
from head to tail, sending sprays of water everywhere. She was drenched. She reached behind her and wrung the water
out of her tail. Usually she wouldn’t have
been out in such a downpour, but she had really wanted to show Mrs. Such her
Leaves, and the rain had begun coming down hard only after she’d arrived
at that elderly squirrel’s entryway.
Hazel beamed with the memory of Mrs. Such’s praise: “You are doing such
a fine thing, recording these Tales for all of us.” she had said. “Such a fine thing.”
Hazel’s Leaves started out as a sort of journal she’d begun
keeping quite a while ago. She had
noticed that the Yards throughout the neighborhood, especially along the
Dodgeways, were littered with small pieces of various kinds of Boxel scraps in
a seemingly endless supply, and that with the right stone or blackened twig she
could make drawings and marks on these wasted bits and pieces. At first she recorded her thoughts,
observations, and memories on these Leaves, and then she began casually
interviewing the other squirrels in the neighborhood. It was her latest
notations that she had been eager to share with Mrs. Such.
Hazel shivered. She
needed a cup of tea—to warm her up and to sooth her dog-jangled
nerves. “That really was a bit too close
for comfort,” she mumbled as she set the dandelions to steeping. “I wonder if it’s too late to turn over a new
leaf as they say…If I am extra nice to him from now on, maybe he’ll….”
“Nice to whom?”
Nutmeg asked, interrupting her sister’s thoughts as she climbed onto
Hazel’s nesting branch.
“Don’t you ever knock?” Hazel scolded.
“Never have!” she chirruped brightly. “Nice to whom?” she repeated.
“Black Dog. He’s on
the loose today.”
“Whoa! That IS news!
I can’t remember that ever happening before. I bet he has a score or two to settle with
you,” she giggled.
“Very funny!”
“Yeah, well, my feeling is, he’s in it for the chase. He wouldn’t know what to do with you if he
did actually catch you.”
“Well, THAT’S reassuring.
And it’s one theory I really don’t want to test.”
“Mom always warned you about that dog….” Nutmeg started to say, but Hazel interrupted,
wanting very much to change the subject. “I’m making some tea—do you want
some?”
“What kind?”
“Dandelion. It’s the
only kind I have at the moment,” Hazel added, knowing exactly what was coming
next.
“I’d rather have Sassafras.”
Hazel sighed. Nutmeg loved to lead her sister to the brink
of total exasperation this way, and it only added to Hazel’s irritation that
she usually found herself following along willingly.
“Well, I don’t have Sassafras. Do you want the Dandelion or not?”
“Okay.”
Hazel prepared a second cup for her sister and then toweled
herself off as best she could with her damp tail before settling down to savor
her own brew. The sisters sipped in
comfortable silence, and then Nutmeg asked, “Why were you out in that rainstorm
anyway?”
“I was over at Mrs. Such’s.”
“Oh! You’ve been working on your Leaves. Can I see them? I love the ones about our younger
days!” she said with a deep theatrical sigh.
Hazel rolled her eyes.
“You’re such a Drama Queen Bee!
We’re not exactly “old” now, you know.
We’re not even three White Seasons yet.”
She involuntarily shivered at the thought of the White Season. It was
her least favorite. She hated
being cold.
Hazel continued to grumble, something about snow and frozen
acorns, but Nutmeg couldn’t understand exactly what she was saying; Hazel’s
voice was muffled because her head was inside the small hollow that was just
behind her nest in the oak tree. She
retrieved several Leaves from the stash she kept there and handed them to
Nutmeg. “These are the latest ones,” she said.
“Thanks!” Nutmeg began to sort through them. “No, wait.
This is one of your first ones.” She held up the torn flap of a cereal
box—it was one of her favorites because it had a picture of savory-looking nuts
on part of it. She read Hazel’s
notation: “I am Hazel, named after mother’s favorite nut. I have a sister, Nutmeg, an exotic nut, spicy
and well-loved.”
“I LOVE that one!” Nutmeg grinned as she handed the Leaf
back to Hazel.
“I really should organize these better,” Hazel remarked as
she dug deeper into the hollow, tossing out unwanted bits of twigs and other
debris that had found their way into the stash.
“Organize them better?
How about organize them at all!” Nutmeg countered. She stood behind her sister now, peering over
her shoulder into the cavity. “Pull them
all out. I’ll help you put them in some
kind of order. And once we’re done, we
can even lace them together with a long piece of grass, or a flower stem. That way they’d stay organized.”
“Really? You want to
do this now?” Hazel asked.
“Sure! Why not? Seems like the perfect project for a rainy
evening. Especially with that Black Dog lurking about out there.”
“Well. Okay. I’ll put on another pot of tea.”
“Sure wish it was going to be Sassafras,” Nutmeg grumbled
under her breath.
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