I knew our relationship was in trouble when she threw herself at my closed window, twice in a row.
To this hungry and observant grey squirrel, the one with the white mark over her eye, I had become a peanut dispenser. She didn't know how the peanuts flew out of my hand — her walnut-sized brain was unable to comprehend my motivation — but she knew that they did, and that was enough for her. Others, of the ten or so that spent time in my yard, had learned to come up the stairs to my porch door for peanuts when they heard it creak open, some scurrying from several backyards over. But only this one thought to come around each morning and check for more, even when there was no creak at the door.
When she could see me in the kitchen, she would lie on her stomach on one of the wood steps to the apartment above and stare down at me, her head bobbing to follow my waving hands as I told a story to friends. She was so adorable lying there looking in, and I rewarded her for her smarts by giving her a few extra peanuts. The next time she saw my waving peanut-hands through the window she dove at them, thudding into the glass, awkwardly careening down to the deck below. That was the last time I fed squirrels from my door, electing instead to spread nuts out in the yard, far from my apartment and waving hands.
Before I became a peanut dispenser, squirrels were for me what they are for most people: an anonymous blur of grey and black, constantly in the periphery, darting around in parks and along residential streets. I paid them little mind.
But as I watched the squirrels from the window of my home office, day after day, I realized something that should have been obvious to me before: like a dog or a cat, each squirrel is an individual with a personality and a history. In my yard, for instance, where there had once been a grey-black blur, there are now characters: the one with the missing tail, and the bully that stands menacingly over a cache of nuts hoarding it from others. And, of course, there's the one with the mark over her eye, the one that dove into my window.
I watched, during mating season, when a group of squirrels would run around in a frenzied mass, corkscrewing up into the treetops and back down. It was the male suitors, chasing each other around to demonstrate prowess — gray squirrels are civil animals that solve most problems with chasing, posturing, and noises, only resorting to fighting in rare instances.
I watched in the spring and late fall as mothers raised broods of kittens (baby squirrels), scurrying them up to their nest when humans approached.
I watched, one sweltering August day, as four squirrels splayed themselves out on their bellies, each one on his own branch, to rest in the shade of a tree's lowest boughs.
I watched a squirrel below my birdfeeder jump onto a pigeon's back, then flip the bird onto its stomach — not to hurt it, just to assert itself. This is my seed, the squirrel said, and the pigeon listened.
I watched a squirrel reach through the slats of a wooden staircase to punch an imposing cat in the nose.
And I watched, one winter, as my local squirrels got mange, a nasty but common parasitic infection. Tiny mites bore their way into the squirrel’s skin, causing incredible itching. The infected area becomes enflamed, and the hair falls out. One squirrel in particular got it real bad, losing more than half of his fur. Whenever he came around, I would set out a mixture of nuts (it turns out peanuts are not that good for squirrels). I Googled "mange" and found that it might be possible to treat it with an antibiotic, but that it would have to be administered by hand. But how was I going to get a prescription for a squirrel? And, even more difficult, how was I going to catch and feed him? I abandoned the idea.
Then, after a prolonged cold spell, he stopped coming. Eventually I found him, his tiny frozen body lying on the gravel driveway, eyes closed. He had scratched his stomach so often you could see the bones of his ribcage through his bare skin. I felt a rush of remorse: if only I had got the antibiotics, if only I had taken the time. I buried him in the garden and marked the grave with a little stick cross.
Squirrels are animals we see so often that we stop seeing them at all. They're also one of the few animals we see dead — squashed flat — and eventually we even stop noticing that. But I had seen this squirrel live, get sick, and die, and I'd witnessed the community he was part of, and so we had had a relationship. By slowing down and taking notice, I had seen this little squirrel for what he was: not a blur but an individual life, and one that was going to take its course, despite me.