Aged Curl

When Jinx and I finally left the house this morning, the rain was draped across the mountains in an undulating line, gray and sweet, the droplets magnifying the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine and violet. I wore hat and boots and coat. Jinx wore his blue collar.

We made it to the end of the driveway, and then Jinx saw him.

Methuselah has roamed this farm since before we arrived. The first year we were here, I saw him hanging upside-down from one of the bird feeders, trying to gnaw his way through the metal into the sunflower seeds. I lifted my BB gun and popped off a shot in his general direction, wanting to merely scare him off. Instead, I hit him on his smooth flank. The gray squirrel ran to the nearest tulip poplar, scampered halfway up the trunk, and then looked at me with the clearest expression of reproach any creature besides my mother has ever managed. The glare worked, because I was touched with regret and shame, and vowed never to so much as toss a rock in his direction ever again.

Talking with a neighbor later that week, I learned that the squirrel with the white patch on his face was a longtime resident of this area, a survivor of predators of all varieties for many years. When the neighbor described the long reign of the squirrel, I mentally named him “Methuselah” and determined to leave him alone, a promise I have kept.

JInx feels himself to be exempt from this vow. When we reached the end of the driveway, Methuselah darted in front of us; he must have been running from across the field and when we neared him, he likely figured “In for a penny, in for a pound” and just went for it. Jinx of course lost his spotted mind and treed the old fellow. For almost a half hour, I couldn’t persuade him to give up the circling vigil, so I walked on, looking back until I went around the bend in the road to see if JInx was still on duty. When I returned in a short while, there he was. I snapped his leash on his collar and he immediately gave up the position and returned to the house with me. When we reached the front door, I looked back to see Methuselah make his way down from the tree and hop with the care of a creature his age across the grass to another tree and ascend into its branches.

What a wonder is an elderly animal like the squirrel. To have evaded doom all these years in an environment swarming with predation and capture and death…surely this makes him special, stronger, more powerful as a squirrel in the kingdom of squirrels? Whenever I see a squirrel laying dead in the dust of the road, I look closely at its face to see if it bears the distinctive white blaze with which I identify old Methuselah, and I am always relieved to see that it is not him who has been killed.

For me, I ask St. Francis of Assisi to pray for Methuselah, that he will always outrun and outwit Jinx and the other predators in these acres, that he will return each night to his nest of leaves in the high poplar, that he will someday sigh and settle down into a sleep that blends seamlessly into eternity for him, with no fang, no claw, no firearm projectile ever touching his smooth fur. I like to think of him curled in his nest, aged and noble and serene, his tail hugged to his sleek little chest, his great dark eyes closed into little slanted slits behind which his dreams range across the screen of his little mind, dreams in which he outsmarts all the creatures of the mountains and springs like an athlete across boughs and fences and vines. Aged and curled in his nest, safe from the sudden violence that roams the fields below, buffeted only by gentle breezes and safe from the chilling rain.

What would such a powerful squirrel think if he knew that an old man sits in his own nest of wood and brick and ponders his scirus ways? What would he think if he knew that the old man lifts prayers on behalf of him, and that he considers him a friend and a fellow sojourner in these woods and fields during the brief time of life here? Perhaps he is more aware of these things than we might imagine.

Perhaps he is wise. Perhaps his understanding is remarkable and deep and profound. Perhaps he is curled in his nest even now, waiting for the warming touch of the sun and the chance to descend and uncover one of his thousands of caches. Perhaps I will see him again very soon.

~ S.K. Orr