September with Squirrelly

An afternoon visit with Squirrelly (click on photos to enlarge)

Squirrelly and I had a nice visit the other afternoon – a welcome break during a very busy season.

We’re really quite alike, the two of us. Sure, he/she’s a North American Red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus), and I’m a human (Homo sapiens), so at first you might not spot the resemblance – until September. That’s when you’ll find us both scurrying about, hard at work to bring in the harvest and store it away for the winter.

Squirrelly’s haul is mostly Douglas fir cones, efficiently stripped off the trees, dropped to the ground and hidden in caches in the forest. Mine includes a seemingly endless stream of zucchini, grapes, and soon (once I get the grapes out of the way), hardy kiwis, stashed in the freezer and pantry instead of the forest.

Whether squirrel or human, all this rushing about is tiring for any animal. So it’s good to take little break with a friend now and then (even if that friend is sometimes a bit preoccupied by an itch).

I enjoyed our time together, and Squirrelly seemed to as well. But eventually, he/she let me know that it was time to go – that we both needed to get back to work. After all, September is almost over!