A Squirrel’s Breath

Saturday we experienced one of those ineffable Southeast Alaska spring mornings: calm, cool air, fragrant with alder blossoms; sun rising clear over the Coast Range to the east, illuminating the pod of sea lions pursuing fish—relatively quietly, for them—in the fjord below.

Our recently arrived songbirds sang to greet the morning: hermit and varied thrushes, Townsend’s warblers, ruby crowned kinglets and Savannah sparrows. Our steadfast, resident Pacific wrens sang their long, defiant land-rights claims from high spots on the beach. Hummingbirds flitted back and forth in their never-ending struggle to dominate and control our dooryard resources, the nectar feeders. All this bellicosity, expressed in the sweetest tones, did little to alter the sense of serenity that permeated the day.

I stood among all of this, listening also to a quiet, yet comparatively loud commotion near the smoke house.

A squirrel apparently had business near there. As I turned to look for it, I must have startled the animal, because I heard it “exclaim” as our red squirrels do when surprised. I also heard it scrabble away through the trees.

I should point out that our local red squirrels are the smallest squirrels in North America. Our average squirrel is only about as large as an American robin.

I never saw the squirrel itself. Instead, I saw something minute, yet startling: I watched a small puff of vapor, lit by the morning sun, dissipate in the still morning air. I actually saw the squirrel’s breath.

That, dear reader, is a rare, still spring morning!

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2 Responses to A Squirrel’s Breath

  1. Jean Lowe says:

    This Iowa-born Southern Californian reader envies the plethora of birds and wildlife. On my balcony I can see hummingbirds and an occasional sparrow who would like to get at the nectar. Your description of it all was beautiful (for lack of a better word.)

  2. Mark Zeiger says:

    Thanks, Jean! It’s so hard to get good photos of our birds, that words are about all I have to share them with others.

    We have golden crowned warblers that try to drink from hummingbird feeders–others around here say it’s a yearly thing, we’ve only had one so far. Our main hummingbird feeder “raiders” are the squirrels!

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