I left some snacks out yesterday. These dumb peanut butter puffs that Ben bought. They have a faint taste of peanut butter but mostly taste like air and leave you wanting more peanut flavor. Ben says, “I’m chasing it til I get to the bottom of the bag” with a familiarity I can appreciate.

I didn’t want those puffs, but it turns out nobody else did either. They went untouched all day.

I had hope for the night critters. When I heard some unfamiliar but familiar chittering after dark, I thought it was definitely small rodents enjoying my snack! I didn’t peek for fear of scaring them.

In the morning all of those dumb peanut puffs were still on the ground.

I told myself I’d pick them up later and went about my day. Oh well, all attempts at feeding woodland creatures human food were a loss. (Somebody had picked through my muesli offering earlier in the week, and not very thoroughly.) They had taste, these animals, and I didn’t blame them. Maybe I would find some bird food in a store in town.

There are all these noises from all over the mountaintop now, as people winterize and renovate before the end of the season (first of November). That’s why I wasn’t surprised to hear a tapping-at-bark kind of sound while I was preparing breakfast. You differentiate sounds better when the world is quieter though, so it was only a second before I realized the weird tapping was coming from my backyard.

It turns out these squirrels are even noisier than I knew! Here this svelte red rodent came, looking posh really, with her ear tufts and fluffy train, just clattering down the tree closest the deck. Clattering! “thiChuk! Chuk! Chuk! thiChuk!” her strong little claws gripped the bark on descent, knocking some off at every grab. She was going head first! “Oh! It’s you,” I said gently upon finding her there. “Chuk! Chuk! thiChuk!” she paused only to look at me then hit the deck with a rackety thump and scampered noisily–really, no regard for the elegance of even her own attire–to the other side before dashing across the yard to another tree where she finally rested to stare at length back toward me.

I looked and saw that there was one fewer peanut butter puff.