The cock no longer sent her his thought. The only voice that reached her was the wind’s, which was not calling to her nor to anyone. The integrity of her wildness had required her to make the lonely choice, but it would prevent her from dramatizing the sacrifice. If the cock’s wishes and hers could not be fulfilled until next year, at least the wishes soon would be silenced — as soon as the covey would come together for their pleasant fall wanderings. Meanwhile, she and the cock were birds to whom waiting was not a vacant time, but a way of full living.
Even on this night in the strange tree, the Grouse was not entirely alone. Before she closed her eyes she saw the bat that she had watched from the pine roost. He passed her once, then again, and again. He was not a friend but he was someone comfortably familiar.
WHAT HAPPENED TO
The Chickaree
The instant the Chickaree stirred from his sleep he was tense — he must leap at that jay! The jay has a long, sharp beak. The Chickaree has no weapons except his teeth, shaped to bite nuts, not bones. But even the defenseless can fight. The jay wants the Chickaree’s mushrooms. He shall not have them!
The waking squirrel opened his eyes, and found himself in deep night. No jay was there, only jay feathers. Under the Chickaree was a whole bed of the feathers. As he slept, every breath had drawn in the disturbing jay scent.
Never before had he smelled jay feathers when he awakened. His nose quivered, searching for the odor of other squirrels, for the fur, musk, and pitchy paws of his family. Their scent had been strong in the hollow pine stub where he had slept during his ten months of life. Now he could find no trace of it.
The dead pine had not swayed; this bed was swinging. And the night noises were louder here than they had been in the stub. From below in the canyon came the cold, continuous roar of the river. A bear snorted as it stretched against a cedar and tore at the bark. Somewhere near, the jaws of a bat snapped over a moth. More familiar was the wind, hanging in loops of sound that lifted and fell as they were combed by the long pine needles.
Many times the Chickaree had aroused in darkness, when his mother had untangled herself from the sleeping young to leave the nest. He never had followed her then, but now he was out in the night, lost among strange sounds and scents. A faint light was coming over his shoulder. He turned to it, and in moving clipped off his drowsiness. Now he knew where he was — this was his new nest! This was the first nest of his own, the one he had been making for many days.
Only yesterday the Chickaree had finished the bed of the nest. Its base was soft twig ends, cut from the branches, then collected on the ground and carried up the trunk. Twigs in place, the Chickaree had gone below to hunt for feathers. He had found a heap of them under a seedling pine — all Steller jay feathers. The jay’s captor, who had left them, had left no trace of himself. The Chickaree had sped up and down his tree, taking the feathers to his nest before any other squirrel might discover the treasure.
The bed had been finished by sundown. When a flap was made for the entrance, the entire nest would be complete. The Chickaree had not intended to occupy it until the hole was covered, but when he had placed the last feather, he had been very tired. He had curled up on the new bed instead of returning to the hollow stub. Sleep had descended swiftly as a hawk.
After he woke at midnight, the Chickaree lay within the dome of the nest, tail over his back, chin between his forepaws. He could look out into the dark trees stirring, and the sky. The moon was hidden behind the mountains but it brightened the clouds, many shining strands of clouds flying westward over the treetops.
The Chickaree crept from the nest. Softly, without a click of his paws, he ran out on a branch. Between the twigs he had wedged a supply of mushrooms to dry, to be stored later in knotholes. He would eat one mushroom tonight. Taking a fresh one, he went back to the crotch of the limb. He sat up with his back to the nest, turning the mushroom in his forepaws and nibbling the edge.
The sprays of the fir were clustered around him, a cover in which to hide and feel secure. But suddenly a cold call flooded through them. A great horned owl, in this very tree, had heard some animal move and would try to frighten it into revealing its whereabouts. The Chickaree had a panicky impulse to dart into his nest, but resisted it. He lowered his eyelids to conceal the shine. Then he froze, with the mushroom in front of his mouth.
Again came the owl’s hollow call, and everything firm slipped away, as if the Chickaree had jumped for a branch and missed. He waited, knowing that the owl was somewhere in the black shade behind him. Now even the wind was still … though the safe white clouds raced as steadily over the sky.
Finally, after a long silence, the Chickaree heard feet strike the earth below. There was a tearing of roots and fibres, a tiny shriek, and quiet. The Chickaree remained motionless until he saw the shadowy owl fly across the Rock’s granite field and out over the canyon. Then he began again to take bites of his mushroom. When it was gone he went inside. He spread his tail over himself, and under it was warm. But the owl had increased his uneasiness about the entrance. As long as it was open he would not be able to sleep soundly in his new nest.
He was roused in the morning by the voice of the Steller Jay. Plainly the bird was excited. Danger to a jay often meant danger to the Chickaree, but he tingled with curiosity. From the nest hole he peered cautiously down the fir trunk and out through the boughs. When he found no invader in his own tree, he bounded to the end of the nest branch.
Other jays had begun to screech and the squirrel joined their clamor. His cries were much like theirs, but he seemed to make them differently. He jerked, as if he were a little bag filled to bursting with bright sound that piped out whenever the bag was jostled.
It was a fine vivacious start for the day, to swing on the end of a bough making that shrill commotion. But the Chickaree soon lost interest. He couldn’t discover the danger. Probably it was on the ground, a long way down. Later he would go below for something to eat, but he could begin with his mushrooms. Taking one of the wide, flat kind from its notch, he went back into the nest with it.
The morning was only a shade lighter than the night, but it was something definitely there, a dark brightness in the branches that sharpened the shape of the needles as water seems to sharpen whatever it wets.
Generally the Chickaree sensed the approach of day by the birds’ doings. Today something had stirred the jays earlier than usual, but soon they quieted down, and chirps, as detached as waking thoughts, were coming from many small throats and putting time back in its proper step.
The Grouse broke from her pine and came sweeping downhill. For an instant she was in the Chickaree’s tree, and then was out in clear sky. The rush of her wings fell quickly into silence. One rough cry filled the air as a raven passed, flying ahead of the flock that soon would set out down the canyon. A pileated woodpecker tapped a few times slowly, and stopped. And an olive-sided flycatcher called. All day its voice would plead, as if it never would lose hope of getting an answer. These sounds were only fragments, not yet gathered into anything sure, until a robin began to sing. It was the robin who had a nest on a lower branch of the Chickaree’s fir. Its voice rose firm and clear through all the tree.
The Chickaree came out of his nest and headed down the steep trunk. He timed his steps exactly with sweet, liquid barks. First he went forward one set of steps and one bark, then a run and a medley of sprightly sounds to accompany it. Another slow step and slow bark, and the quick ones again; all the way to the ground he matched his gait with a kind of musical announcement.
The ground was always a foreign place, and the Chickaree paused before he went onto it. His hind legs were on the trunk of the tree, his bark-colored fur was against bark, and the push in his forelegs was ready to whirl him back if he saw or smelled an enemy. But he didn’t, so he leapt into hiding below some seedling pines. He was starting to his old home grounds around the family stub, and to get there quickly was going part way through the brush.
To
run would have been too dull a way to travel. The Chickaree sprang along in bounds, touching on front feet, then more than his length forward on back feet, bouncing over twigs and rocks softly and lightly. On each tree trunk he jumped sidewise, stopping to look ahead and be sure he wouldn’t meet any enemy before he reached the next tree.
All the Chickaree’s industrious energy turned this morning towards his wish to finish his nest. But first he must fill himself up with good nourishing food; no animal disregarded that need. As he passed, he saw juncos pecking among the grasses, trying to make their discoveries catch up with their appetites. The Chickaree galloped up a fir tree and out onto a branch. From its end a western wood pewee circled into the air to catch insects. The Chickaree leapt to a pine, bounding past a white-headed woodpecker drilling for beetles. These birds, like most of his neighbors, depended on chance to satisfy their hunger, and often were disappointed. The Chickaree never had known the insecurity of an empty stomach.
He and his family had worked together during the previous fall, gathering and storing nuts and berries. In the spring the young squirrels had scattered, but those near enough still came back to share what remained of the winter stock. The Chickaree went first to the draw where the cones were buried. At first there had been more than fifty of the cone caches, with up to twenty cones in each. On June eighteenth he found a whole, untouched cache. These were only the small sequoia cones, but he took one in his mouth and jumped to the top of a log with it.
As he chewed through the scales to reach the seeds, he noted the happenings of the night in this familiar territory. A wildcat had left her scent in the draw and it made the Chickaree sharply aware of all the openings between leaves and tree trunks. A bear had passed; brown hairs caught on the spiney twigs of a manzanita told that the bear had pushed through to pull out the last of his woolly winter coat. A new chipmunk was stretched up on a boulder. He must have come since yesterday. He watched enviously as the Chickaree’s teeth dived into the cone. Towards the tip the seeds were scarce, and the Chickaree lost patience. He tossed the cone to the ground and the chipmunk ran to it shyly.
The Chickaree saw that the nest of some mice had been torn apart. Who had done that? He dropped from the log and sniffed over the scattered fibres with a murmur, low and plaintive, as if he felt it a sad thing to be mystified. Near the end of the log were tracks of the Deer Mouse, and a little pit in the soil. The Chickaree remembered that he had buried an acorn there. He scooped the pit deeper, found that the Mouse had taken the nut, and turned away with a small, fiery mumbling.
The Chickaree then dug to another acorn, but one whiff proved that it had been wormy. When he buried it he had not been as keen as he was now in detecting the worm smell. The third acorn was a good one, with his lick sign still upon it. Spring rains had left a mat of leaves over the spot since he’d pawed out the hole and thrust the nut in deep with his nose, since he gave it the lick that meant, “This acorn is mine.” But he knew where it should be, and scratched away the leaves and found it.
Finally he unburied a Jeffrey pine cone. It was a big one, half as long as he and weighing a third as much. He couldn’t bound through the boughs with so heavy a cone, so he carried it back to his fir by the ground route. With the cone in his mouth he started up the trunk of his tree. Once he had to stop, cling to the bark with his hind feet, and shift the cone with his forepaws so that his teeth had a better grip. But soon he was past his nest. He went on until he had reached the highest crotch where he could brace himself.
This was his favorite perch and his favorite kind of cone but he worked as if he had only one wish — to be through and away. He held the cone by its ends, turning it on the branch, pulling out the tight scales with his teeth. The two seeds under each scale he stored in his cheek until he had a mouthful to chew.
While the Chickaree’s cone scales flew, the sun rose over the sharp white skyline, high on the east. Soon it was round. Its flame was licking the edges of the mountain peaks, and a violet radiance poured down the snows.
The world became crested with light. Above the shadowed ranges, brightness touched granite pinnacles and domes. It washed along the tops of ridges, now the ridge beyond the canyon. It reached the trees at Beetle Rock. The delicate fire was leaping from one green crown to another. It was on the Chickaree’s tree — on his cone and the glinting hairs of his paws. It was making his cream-white belly rosy.
Around the squirrel in the sky, halos circled the Jeffrey pine tassels as sunlight gleamed on the needle tips. The darker sprays of the firs were sparkling; the plumes of the sugar pines glistened more softly. Green needles were clustered with needles of light, green shine was reflected on shadows, green shadows lay behind all the shimmering. Nothing was still, nothing was solid or firm in this high field of the treetops, but the field belonged only to airy creatures, to the birds and the few squirrels that broke up into it.
The Chickaree looked up from his cone.
“Qui-ro!” he cried.
The whistled call shrilled out over the trees, down into the canyon, up toward the snows.
“Qui-ro! Qui-ro!” Then faster: “Qui … qui … qui … qui … qui, qui, qui, qui, qui … qui-ro!”
The Chickaree gave the cone core a wide throw over his shoulder. His paws and face were sticky with pitch. He chewed the pitch off his paws, then rubbed them over his nose, scraped his chin on the branch, and gave his fur a licking and preening. Now he was fed and clean and ready for the work of the day, the weaving of the flap for the nest hole.
The work was urgent, because the Chickaree felt exposed without the hanging, and because nest-building belonged to the spring, long since past. This actually was the second nest he had made. The first he had started on time.
During the early warmth, when snow was thudding down from the branches, he had felt a vague restlessness in the hollow stub and his mother’s nest. At that time there had come to Beetle Rock a new little female, with gracefully daring ways. He had spent several lively days chasing her and fighting other males that would not stay away. Finally he’d caught her, so completely that he knew that game was over.
At once she had begun to line a hole in a pine with grasses, soft for hairless new-born squirrels. That nest would be the Chickaree’s, too, on the coldest days of the following winter, but the inside of a tree didn’t appeal to him for the summer. When his mate had begun her nest, he also had suddenly wanted one, but he built his own out on a cedar bough.
That first nest had been huge, with more and more twigs and fibres woven into it. He never used it. When it was nearly finished, lightning struck the tree, the bough crashed, and the fine new nest was scattered over the wet ground.
The Chickaree had begun another the next day. The top of a tall fir had been broken off by the wind, years before; from the break one limb grew out horizontally and another straight up. On the trunk, in the nook between the branches, was the second nest, woven more firmly than the first. Now that only the hanging remained to be made, perhaps the nest could be completed before night.
The Chickaree got strips of hairy bark from his old cedar. Wonderfully the knowledge of how to make the curtain was in his paws. It should be attached to the top of the entrance but left loose below. He began by pushing the shreds of bark into the matted twigs over the hole. When he had drawn them through, he let the ends hang loose for weaving. The work would have been easier if he hadn’t had stubs for thumbs, but he handled the fibres by folding his four fingers over against his palm. Usually he could make the shreds go where he wanted them. When he couldn’t, he let impatience fly from all over him, from his tongue and tail, his shining brown eyes, and his erect little ears. A few times he was so annoyed that he stomped his feet, sputtering and whistling. He wove so steadily that the nest began to seem finished, though the hanging was still a paw’s width from the floor.
For a chickaree, every season brought a new undertaking. After the nest-building of spring would come an exploration of his trees. The Chickaree had appr
opriated six, and they still were new to him. He didn’t know all the possible leaps, the danger spots where boughs swung too loosely, and where lichen hid twists and breaks. Now, with the nest being completed so late, the Chickaree had a strong impulse to be gaining that knowledge.
Perhaps it was because of that impulse that he would finish the hanging with moss. He could get moss on the old family stub, circling over through his Jeffrey pine, sequoia, and sugar pine. He started by dropping lower in the fir. Fir boughs were so dense that in that tree he moved like a fish in a pond of water, with a flowing in quick, sinuous curves. An easy leap took him to the Jeffrey pine, where he galloped on branches long and firm in the wind. The sequoia boughs were twisted, but his claws gripped the fibrous bark so that he dared to run swiftly. Each kind of tree called for a different skill. The Chickaree hadn’t yet the sure footing of an older squirrel, but he was learning to depend on the sensitive tail that helped to correct his balance, and the set of long tactile hairs on each arm that guided his paws.
One Day On Beetle Rock Page 5
