Since the onset of winter conditions in the ravine with snow covering the forest floor and much, much colder weather prevailing with the usual share of high winds, Heckle and Jekyll, the two small black squirrels who are always in one another's company have resumed their winter-time residence in the old pine at the foot of the first long decline into the ravine proper, close to where we enter the ravine from our home just up the hill and down the street.

They are there to greet us, or at least to await our depositing of peanuts in the cracks of the old pine's trunk. We admonish them daily to allow the peanuts left on the pine to suffice their growing winter stockpile, and leave off gathering others we cache nearby for other squirrels who also venture by daily in hopes of securing their own storageable edibles.

We wonder, at times, just how far afield some of those squirrels who have become accustomed to our daily presence slogging through the woodland trails and depositing peanuts, do actually venture. There was the rare occasion when we would see our old friend Stumpy skittering along on our back fence. At those times he wouldn't respond to us, as he always did in the ravine. While he's been gone the last few years, Stumpette has taken his place, showing up in the most unexpected places throughout our ravine ramble, looking in our usual cache places and sometimes confronting us expectantly, but never outside the ravine. It was easy enough to recognize them because of their severely truncated tails.

On Monday, when I happened to be shaking out some of my lambswool dusters at the front door, a small black squirrel suddenly appeared close to the porch and hunkered itself down on its back paws, front paws up, as if in expectation. I hardly hesitated, closed the door and ran over to the back door where the peanuts are kept, scooped up a few, returned to the front door, and there he still was, waiting. In fact, the little thing approached closer, albeit gingerly, and waited again until I tossed several peanuts toward him whereupon he scooped them up and disappeared.

Thereafter when I was shaking out those dusters, there he would appear, slightly bolder each time, and each time I responded with peanuts. When, slightly later, I was shaking the dustmop out at the back door, to my amazement there he was again. Granted, since the snow has settled its permanent presence on our landscape, I've taken to putting out a few peanuts on the back steps, and it's likely this is what has inspired the persistence of the squirrel, if indeed it is the same squirrel each time, and it likely is.

I just wonder if there is a recognition quotient here as well, whether this is a squirrel who migrates when the spirit takes it, from the ravine, to the street and beyond, into the backyards of houses. Whether, by extension, there is something about me personally that is recognizable to a squirrel long accustomed to my transitory presence in the ravine.