Laura Erickson's For the Birds

I’m looking out my window into my backyard, counting squirrels. There are two in the box elder next to my house, and two more in the box elder farther back. There are three in the maple, and five in the spruce trees. And there are eight in the feeders and on the ground beneath them. That makes a total of20 squirrels, and I can’t even see the side or front yard. Some people would see this as a plague-bushy tailed rodents pigging out on bird seed, but to me, squirrels are a blessing. Their friendly ways and graceful, acrobatic maneuvers make them a joy to watch, and something about their bushy tails arched gracefully over their backs give me a lovely warm feeling on a frigid day. I have one feeder that is attached right to my dining room window, where I can watch squirrels from inches away. Their tiny hands manipulate the seeds so cleverly, and their earnest, hungry expression as they feed makes me happy to provide them with nutritious meals.

Nineteen of the squirrels in my yard are just that-squirrels in my yard-anonymous, interchangeable. If a large hawk or owl flew in and gobbled one up, I’d probably identify more with the prey than predator, but would be fairly neutral about the whole event. But I am personally acquainted with one of my squirrels-Little Stumpy Tail. She was originally just one of the interchangeable ones until a fox or something ripped her tail off four years ago. For a few weeks the raw muscle and tail-end of her spine remained, but was badly infected and, I think, got frostbit on top of that. She appeared very ill for many days, and the tail finally broke off, leaving her with just a stump. She was a wild animal, not accustomed to handouts, so there was no way I could offer her any medication , but we all felt sorry for her, and started putting out peanuts the moment we saw her around. After all these years, she’s still too shy to take peanuts right from my hand, but she comes immediately when I call, and has even taken to looking one by one into my house windows from various trees until she catches my eye-the moment we make eye contact I always run and get her peanuts. I wonder if she takes pride in having so totally trained a human being.

Oddly, the one feature that I most love about squirrels-their graceful tail that helps them balance as they jump branch to branch and then protects them from rain and cold-is exactly the feature that Little Stumpy Tail lacks. But her earnest little face peering at me through the window more than makes up for that deficiency. Looking out over twenty anonymous squirrels and being able to pick out the one familiar one gives me as warm a feeling as finding myself in a strange place and suddenly finding one familiar human face.