250 Words on Hope and Squirrels

 

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Friends and readers know that my neighborhood burned to the ground in the 2017 Tubbs wildfire. For quite a while, the place was a sterile gray ruin. Then, slowly, life returned.

Deer appeared, venturing up from a nearby creek. They were regular callers even before the fire, but we also got rarer visitors: rabbits, foxes, coyotes. Crows were the only birds for a while, except for the hawks and vultures wheeling high overhead.

We rebuilt, as did many of our neighbors. Gradually, streetlights turned back on and fences went back up. Commensurately, wildlife sightings went down. But as we landscaped, other life returned. Bees and hummingbirds to the flowers. Finches, juncos and towhees to the saplings. Quail to the shrubs. 

We still have no squirrels.

In the pre-blaze days, squirrels were common enough to be nuisances. Rats with good PR. They need trees of a certain size to nest and scamper in, preferably in large thickets. More than seven years after the fire we still have none, and probably won’t for at least a decade. I see squirrels in nearby neighborhoods that survived the fire and try to convince them to follow me home. None have yet accepted my offer.

The first day I see a squirrel back in my yard will be a joyous one. I wonder if I put too much weight on it, as if that will be the final sign that both the land and we are healed, when I know very well neither will be.

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