Pink Paws

YY chewed the morning cheek-acorn three quick chews, swallowed, and climbed onto the high branch before the sky had finished going pale, ears forward, tail still, blinking at the gap in the canopy where the herons had crossed yesterday.

The wing-beat came on time. Not at the same volume — smaller, lower, faster. Five herons today, vee shorter, the lead bird's neck folded but its eye level. The flight crossed the dead pine without slowing, without banking, without giving him anything to misread. The whole thing took maybe two minutes. The wing-beat went over the next ridge, the brook came back, the morning continued.

"Five," YY said, to no one in particular.

He did the small bow he had not done yesterday and did not bow about now.

Then he climbed down for breakfast, which in late winter meant *the rocky shoulder again,* which in late winter meant *I know,* which in late winter meant *a squirrel had to eat.*

The rocky shoulder gave him one acorn-bit out of the same crevice-line. He ate half on the slope and tucked the half back in the cheek for the climb home. The slope was warm in places his paws had not expected to be warm. He squinted at the sky. The sky was the same blue. The air over the dead pine had a smell to it though — something he could not name yet, the cold warmth of a season that had gotten up and turned the corner without putting on a coat.

He started home.

The dogleg back ran past three young white-oaks — a stretch he usually went through fast, because the white-oaks dropped acorns in fall and were only an empty cabinet by May. Today he went through slower. He could not have said why at first.

Then he could.

The wood, around him, had gone quiet.

Not *quiet quiet.* Forager quiet. Ears-up quiet. Nobody-walking-fast quiet. The brook was still at it. The finch was still at it. Everything that walked, walked softer.

YY rounded the foot of the second white-oak.

A young squirrel-mother — Brae, from the lineage off the nut-house log; he had seen her last fall heading the other way, fat with kits — was halfway down the trunk with a kit clinging to the bark above her. The kit was the color of last year's leaf-litter. Its paws were pink. Its eyes had not yet decided how big they were going to be. Brae was inching backwards, tail-first, talking to it in the cadence mothers use that has no words and is not for anyone else.

YY froze mid-step.

The kit took one length down. Then another. Then it slipped — its back paw lost the bark for a heartbeat, the whole small body twisted — and Brae's tail came up and behind in one quick line and caught the slip without quite touching, without quite carrying. The kit's paw came back. The kit's eyes were very large now. Brae kept the cadence going.

YY did not breathe.

Across the slope — through the gap between the second and third white-oak — *another* mother-and-kit pair was on a different trunk doing the same thing. Behind the dead pine, at the edge of his eye, *another.* Past those, at the rim of the lower slope where the slope met the bend, *another.*

Four trunks. Four mothers. Four pink-pawed kits, all coming down for the first time, all at the same hour.

The wood was holding still on purpose.

The kit on Brae's trunk made the last three lengths.

It hit the leaf-litter with a soft *whuff* — a kit-sized landing, not a fall — and stood up on four pink paws on the actual earth for the first time in its life. It looked at the leaves. It looked at Brae. It looked at YY, who was a frozen statue ten feet away, and decided he was either a tree or not its problem. It went back to looking at the leaves.

Brae came down the rest of the trunk and stood next to it.

YY started the slow walk past.

He took the half acorn-bit out of his cheek without looking at it and set it down at the base of the white-oak — soft, no announcement, no word — on the side Brae would come back around to when she was ready to go up. He kept walking. He did not turn.

Behind him, Brae did the small *chk-chk* that meant *seen.* It was not exactly for him. It was for the kit, which now had a mother and a tree and an unexpected acorn-bit in its first afternoon of being a thing in the world.

YY went on through.

When he was past the third white-oak and around the bend toward home, the wood started up again — slow at first, the way the brook starts up after a heron crosses, then full. He let out the breath he had not been letting out.

"*Pink,*" YY said quietly, to himself.

A stand of SUMAC on the dogleg still had a dozen drupes from last year — dark red, dry, a little chewy, the kind of food a squirrel who is honest about the season eats with both paws. YY ate four, which was reasonable. He thought about eating six, which was greedy. He ate five, which was a compromise. The drupes were bitter at the back end and sweet at the last bite — sumac being, in YY's view, the small woods' way of practicing a punchline.

He went on home.

The treehouse smelled the same as yesterday. The back shelf had two acorn-bits, the way he had left it. The kitchen ledge had the syrup-leaf folded into the apple-coil knot, the way he had left it. The cheek was empty for the first afternoon in three.

He sat on the windowsill.

The afternoon sun came in at the angle it had come in yesterday and the day before, but it landed warmer on the floorboard, and where it landed it stayed.

YY took winter-thinning, which had been on him for nine days, off. He did not need to announce it; the wood had announced it. Late winter was over. Whatever came next was going to come next.

He did the small things he did before sleep — straightened the syrup-leaf in the knot, nudged the two acorn-bits a quarter-turn on the back shelf so the broken sides faced in, blinked at the windowsill.

Outside, on the lower slope, four pink-pawed first-of-the-years had stood up on actual earth today for the first time, and the wood had been quiet around them.

He had been part of being quiet around them.

That was a kind of day a squirrel could close.