It's a Man-Thing

It has been a full year since last we last saw Stumpy. For five years before then we had become accustomed to having that little black squirrel lacking a tail, confronting us. He wanted his share of the peanuts that we had begun placing in various parts of our ravine ramble. In fact, the very first time we brought along peanuts with us because I'd thought it might represent a treat for a little red squirrel that used to roost on a branch on the large pine tree that stands at the foot of the long dip from the street level down into the ravine, little Stumpy was smart enough to know something was happening that could benefit him.

It didn't take a genius to realize that the little black squirrel that suddenly appeared beside us on the trail was there because he wanted something of us. My immediate reaction was to toss a peanut his way. He immediately pounced on it, gathered it up, turned it in his clever little paws as though to assess its nutritious weight, then ran off with it, his little behind minus a tail with just a white tuft behind, making him look like a rabbit as he ran off.

It was several years later, when he and we had become accustomed to seeing one another on a regular basis that we realized there was a second squirrel in the ravine, which we would see in an area that Stumpy never appeared in, that was also minus a tail. That little squirrel became known by us as Stumpette. She too was bold, like Stumpy, although not quite in his league. But she also confronted us for peanuts and knew the various caches along the trial route where they were to be found. Yesterday, she finally did what Stumpy used to do. She sat there, beside us, as we waited, Riley included, for her to finish eating the three-chambered peanut we'd given her.

And then, when she had finished, she was given another, and off she ran with it. Prior to this she would simply run off with the first peanut. What she now does is what Stumpy used to do. With Stumpy we would wait silently sometimes for him to finish not just one but two peanuts, giving him a third before he'd go off with it. We miss him.

As we mounted the long hill leading up to the street above the ravine, having completed our usual hour-long circuit, my husband commented that someone was using a lawn mower and he could hear that the blade was hitting the frame of the mower. I couldn't hear anything of the sort, just sounded like the usual noise to me. But as we came abreast of the top of the hill, and out onto the street, there was a neighbour who lives directly across from the trailhead, and with him were two other neighbours who live close by, up the street from where our house is located.

My husband joined them, and they discussed the matter of the wonky lawn mower. My husband said the housing might be loose, or the blade, and it mightn't be a bad idea to just tap the blade with a hammer. That done, the mower was fired up again and sounded the way it should, evidently. And our neighbour set about completing the task he had begun. It did look rather amusing to me to see four quite mature men gathered concernedly around a mechanical contraption, and I thought how like the male mind that appeared.