Ode to a Squirrel

They really are beautiful animals. Silky fur, like a cat’s, a melding of individual black and grey hairs that come together in one impossibly smooth coat. Handsomely bushy tail. Delicate features: small, observant eyes, pert little nose always on the alert, sweet little cups for ears. I got a close-up look at one this morning.

Because, after weeks of autumn squirrel frenzy, tearing around the yard, going over the fence a few times in pursuit, yanking the leash during walks, my dog, Nala, finally caught a squirrel.

I must have been on the phone when it happened—I heard the squealing sounds outside my office window, but dismissed them as squirrels scolding Nala for the constant chase she gave them. By the time I went downstairs for a late breakfast I’d forgotten about the noises. Not for long: when I looked out the kitchen window, there was Nala, standing over a dead squirrel in the back yard.

What to do? Let her eat it? Isn’t that the natural order of things? But Nala didn’t look as though she knew what to do with her prize. Besides, for a dog accustomed to dry kibble, raw squirrel meat might have made her sick. I looked on her jowls for traces of blood and fur – none. Maybe she hadn’t even thought to eat it? It looked intact. Was it even dead?

And what about scolding her? If it is in the dog’s nature to chase and kill squirrels, that hardly seemed fair. But I didn’t feel right about praising her, either, since more dead squirrels are not where I’d like to go with this. So I just brought her in the house. My spontaneous “oh, no,” and “oh, dear,” uttered to no one in particular, were enough to make her cower as if she’d been a very bad girl, and come obediently, leaving her squirrel behind.

Back outside I poked the squirrel with my foot to be sure it was dead, then picked it up by the tail, using a plastic bag like a glove. (My mother always told me not to handle dead animals.) It was much heavier than I thought it would be. And more beautiful, even in death, sleek and whole and perfect. Except for some wet fur where the dog must have mouthed it, it seemed untouched. Its eyes were glazed, definitely dead, but it was still warm, maybe from sitting in the sun.

I put the body in another bag, intending to throw it out with the trash tonight – but as it settled against the plastic I thought no, that doesn’t seem right. So I dug a hole in the garden and buried it there, placing a trash can on top so Nala wouldn’t dig it up again.

When we went back outside later in the day, something seemed to have shifted in the yard. The squirrel noises were different. More high-pitched. Did they miss their mate? There were more birds around. Did they feel emboldened by the death? Did they come to chatter about it? The silences between birdsong and squirrel chatter felt deeper than usual, too. Maybe my senses had just been heightened, but our little ecosystem felt skewed, off-kilter. It felt like there was something missing.

When I took Nala to her dog-buddy’s house for her daily playdate, both seemed more subdued than usual. And my friend, this dog’s owner, told me her mother’s cat had died in the house last night. The cat was 19 years old, so this also fits into “natural order of things,” but still, it was sad. We talked about how the animals are usually such stalwarts in the face of change, they continue to play, to eat, to sleep, as if no one recently lost a job, or got a bad diagnosis, or split up a marriage.

Not today. Today, even the animal world rocked. Perhaps that’s in the natural order of things as well.