Search

 

Share & Subscribe
Share/Bookmark
Subscribe

 

 

Help keep the stumpjack off the endangered species list.



 

For the best choice in premium cigars check out our friends at Cigarsdirect.

Navigation

Entries in squirrel (1)

Sunday
Apr242011

Squirrels like Easter too

Sunday morning. Easter Sunday morning. It’s a beautiful morning. I think it might be in the 50s although I’m feeling even warmer in tee-shirt, hoodie and red & black checked flannel overshirt. I’m sitting in a lawn chair next to our backyard firepit, still damp from melting snow, with my feet up on one of half-dozen stumps arranged around the pit. The stumps came from a huge willow tree that had blown over in my parent’s back yard during one of this past winter’s heavy snowstorms. My Dad and I finished chain-sawing the tree just last week and hauled it all over here to our yard in several wagon-loaded trips. We now have a big pile of firewood and these few stumps to sit on around the firepit.

So, my feet rest upon the heaviest stump while the pre-noon sun warms the left side of my face and makes me squint into the screen of the laptop upon which I’m typing. I can smell that lovely, reassuring aroma of freshly cut timber tinged with machinery oil that always reminds me of my Grandfather’s workshop. In his pre-retirement life he was a lumberman, farmer and carpenter. He used to “cut wood” in the 40 acre woodlot behind his house. A lot of wood; several cords each fall to heat the house through the winter months.

There’s a squirrel in the tree above me making his own familiar noise as he urgently gnaws on a nut. I imagine that he might be Rocky, our pet squirrel of a couple years ago, but I know that that’s probably unlikely. He’s reclined, belly down, on a limb pointed in my direction, watching me as he works on the nut. I wave and make kissing sounds at him and he stops gnawing for just a couple seconds, looking at me blankly and (I imagine) thinking, “What?” with an attitude of irritation more than as an actual question.

I’m really just wasting a little time right now as I wait for Kim to finish getting ready this morning and come outside to take a short walk around the neighborhood with me. I’d rather ride bike together, but her bike has been in the shed all winter and the tires are flat. So we’ll take a walk instead. It sounds like she might be ready to go now, as I hear her telling the girls that we’ll be back shortly. Hope you all have a very pleasant Easter Sunday. Be sure to wave and blow kisses at any squirrels you see.