Stephen's standing at the kitchen window looking out.
"Do you see it?" he asks. "Here on the gate and then over there on the fence?"
"What?" I come over.
"The piles of walnut shells from where the squirrels have been eating them."
I've been seeing them do that a lot lately. Sitting on their ledges, brown balls of fluff with their tails in jaunty question marks, gnawing at nuts over their little piles of refuse. They seem industrious eaters at this time of year. Are they fattening up for winter? Or am I just looking forward to fall?
Me: "I don't see them."
Stephen, annoyed: "I keep having to brush the stuff off. They're leaving it everywhere."
Me, bemused: "You know that's just what squirrels do naturally."
Stephen: "It's gross."
I sidle in closer to him and now I see them. One on the low wooden top of the gate, and two more over there on the fence that separates our yard from our neighbor's. Funny, little piles of shell, almost perfectly shaped, as if art directed by tiny squirrel hands. The way our world is shared with these small beings gives me a happy, little pang in my chest.
Me: "Cute!"
Stephen: "Fuckers."
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