A squirrel on the roof

Maybe it’s Indian summer, maybe just regular summer; been in the high eighties here for the better part of a week. It’s a bit scary to see some leaves turn brown, reminds me of the Dutch elm disease that took all the towns elms in the late sixties. I hugged our last one, shame I didn’t know about chaining myself to a tree. Hmmm, shame is the wrong word, just that if I knew about it I would have done it. The neighborhood is speckled with brown leaves and green ones.

Portland had interesting autumns. In town there were deciduous trees, but most of the rest of the state is rain forest; sequoia, conifers, mutt pine trees. Here it’s mostly deciduous, autumn is striking, unless the brown leaves are indicative of tree deaths. If the sun weren’t in the way I’d take a picture or two, my back yard has some of everything, including brown leafed September trees. I don’t want to lose a tree back there. Squirrels will make winter nests in trees; keeps them from doing it in my garage attic. I don’t mind them up there except for them dropping nuts and squirrel shit on my car.

My GF had a little red mommy squirrel who wintered in her cars engine block. She tried everything from moth balls to … I don’t recall, butterfly nuts? Heh, my older sister, who is fluent in five languages and recently widowed cannot tell that pirate joke right at all. You know the one, punchline “Why do you have a steering wheel on your belt?” “Argh, it’s driving me nuts.” She usually says “Argh, it’s making me crazy” recalls it’s an anatomical joke will say “Argh, its steering me balls.” I’m sure one could come up with a version of Testy (testes), but not this one, I’ll take a soft pass.

I’m sure I have other things to say, for the life of me I can’t think of a single one. Which is not to say there aren’t things. My head isn’t working very well, I mean, I could chain myself to a live tree that no one notices and have to live on squirrel shit and tree bark until I was discovered.

This is the fifth paragraph. These things need five paragraphs or they are unbalanced. Without traditions our lives would be as shaky as a squirrel violist on a limb.