Authors Electric

I now believe in zombies, because Frampton comes alive. My local park (across the street from my house) is a cemetery. My family (which includes me) walks our dog there twice a day. We keep him on leash, and on the path/road, no peeing on great Uncle Fred or anything like that. This cemetery is full of squirrels. In fact, if you are a squirrel, it is the place to be. It is squirrel heaven. It is quiet, lush, green, very tree-ed. Southern California weather. If I hadn't already planned to come back as a sea otter on the Pacific Coast, I'd come back as a squirrel right in this cemetery. We not only walk our dog there, we also bring peanuts for the squirrels (raw, in the shell). I expect, if we were able to stop bringing peanuts, we could probably retire on all the extra not-buying-peanuts money we'd have. We are not able to stop. We've been doing this for about 1.5 years. Every day. Twice a day. The squirrels seem to be waiting for us some days, and I tease my fourteen-ye...

In case anyone is wondering, the title of this post doesn't refer in any way to my mental state or that of anyone with different opinions from me about politics or anything else. The post will literally be about squirrels in the attic, with a few words on the effect of this kind of thing on my writing process. It's mostly a cautionary tale for anyone else who has been 'enjoying' the antics of squirrels around their garden in what has been a very mild winter for us. We've been noticing the squirrels in our garden for some time now, and Jacques the cat has made various pointless attempts to catch one. Lithe and athletic though he is, he is quite a bit heavier than a squirrel and can neither use the spindly lower branches of our conifer nor the walls of the house to get around, although it's not for want of trying in either case. The squirrels have become so confident that they can stare through the conservatory windows and run across the roof without fear of re...

The view from my window: A squirrel feasts on mulberries. The back-alley view from where I sit right now would be uninspiring but for a large and living intruder. A sprawling canopied , out-of-place, forty-foot-tall, spreading wild mulberry— Morus rubra —plays constantly with the incoming light. As I compose this post, pausing and drifting off more often than I'd like, I note its serrated, heart-shaped leaves now bright summery green, on branches rich with dark red fruit, fluttering gently in the mid-afternoon breeze coming off the lake.  Brown specked, white-throated sparrows hop from twig to twig—this being their usual hour of appearance. A chubby, rust gray fox squirrel scampers impossibly along lacy branches, then freezes and wall eyes me through the open window, protected by a screen. Squirrels carry on that way, often within arm's reach, even when our hefty aging Maine Coon orange cat, Oliver, crouches on the windowsill to gaze upon the scene like feline real...