Acorn Island

Acorn Island

Acorn Island is a view of the world from the limited perspective of a squirrel. Scree’s understanding of existence is formed in the nesting tree where survival within the group of siblings teaches him to eat at any opportunity and hide whatever couldn’t be eaten then and eat it later. His life unfolds within the sweeping shift of the seasons and in the changes brought about by a harsh climate and the other creatures competing for similar woodland resources. He is engaged in the pattern of life that is part of a circle, filling his assigned role. Complacently just as ignorant of what goes on beyond the range of his limited vision as the surrounding world is blind to the lives and deaths that take place at the edges of their own perception.

Acorn Island

By Stephen J Pitzen

Smashwords Edition

Copyright (c) 2014 by Stephen J Pitzen

Ebook formatting by Jesse Gordon

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

About the Author

Water like a ribbon torn

Parted by clouds or rocky shores

Raindrops and rivers, snowflakes

and sweat from heated brow

With time and through time are all reborn

Forever bound to an oceanic rendezvous

Chapter 1

The Nesting Tree

In the middle of a broad river that wound its way out of a dark northern forest lay a tiny island. Acorn Island had been created long ago when ice sheets had groaned over the land, moving earth and rock, leveling hills, and building them up again somewhere else. It really wasn’t much of an island; the retreating glaciers had left a stubborn pile of rocks in the middle of a low area where melt waters from the receding ice carved a channel that in time became a river. With the spring’s floods silt and sand gathered around the rocks which were too large to be washed away and each year the river brought seeds; grass, weeds, and eventually trees took root in this rich soil. With more time and many floods the rocks themselves nearly disappeared, covered over by dirt and vegetation except near the shore where the current at the river’s edge constantly rubbed as it made its way to the distant sea.

High above the water, balanced near the end of an oak limb sat a very old squirrel. The gray fur of his face had all gone white and his dizzying leaps from limb to limb had lost most of their acrobatic quality. In spite of his age, in the waning light at the end of each day, as had become his custom, he climbed to a certain spot and barked out his name. This was his place, the perch where, as if in a trance, he stared across to the distant shore and waited a response. On some evenings, if the wind was just right or there was no wind at all, from across the river he could hear others call out their names and like most living things he was sure they were responding to him and that his challenge had been met. On those evenings he could puff up and bark out his name again and again claiming this territory and warning away all trespassers. Usually at the middle of the river there was a wind and he heard nothing, so as night replaced the day he somewhat sadly ran down the limb, crawled through the hole in the old oak, up into his nest, and went to sleep, waiting for the return of the Sun.

He hadn’t started out on Acorn Island; no squirrel had ever been here before him and with the forested bank of the river so far away the likelihood of another chance landing was very remote. His life had begun in the dark cold of spring, eight years before, and several miles upriver from this tiny bit of land, on the shore he now gazed at longingly. Squirrels are not long lived creatures; to reach five is an accomplishment many never make, to live through eight winters entailed more suffering than most would care to endure.

The smallest of his littermates he would have died the first night eyes sealed, hairless and nudged away from his mother’s warmth by the survival instinct of his larger siblings but his luck in the birth order placed him in the center where pushing from both sides kept him tightly wedged in warmth and near a nipple. Later as they grew the pups jostled one another for better places, but by then his fur kept him warm even as his smallness moved him further away from his mother’s side. He learned to sit quietly near the nests edge by the hole his mother went through when she left them. While his littermates played and quarreled together near the center he tried to stay warm in this draftier area, bunched up against the well gnawed wall, listening for the sound of her paws scraping along the bark of the tree just before she slipped back through the hole. Waiting there he was able to latch onto a hanging teat as she made her way towards the center of the hollowed out tree, and before finally being forced away from the milk by the last of the other pups to find a nozzle, he could capture enough nutrition to survive until the next feeding.

Their world was made up mostly of darkness, even with eyes opened when light filtered in through the hole, it was dim and distant. In the pattern of the light coming and going they learned what would be the pattern of their lives. Sleeping, eating, squabbling and playing weren’t regulated as much by mood, hunger, or exhaustion as they were by a shifting light their mother was able to disappear into. When darkness comes to the center of a hollow basswood tree it is total, and then they dug into the layers of leaves, acorns husks, and shredded pine cones piling on top of one another and slept.

Each developed a voice and a singular cry that was as close to a name as they were to have. It pleaded their cause, or claimed victory in the ritual battles that took place during most of their waking hours. For seemingly no reason at all they would let out harsh barking calls, and while the sounds seemed very similar, each squirrel could recognize who had made it, determine if something was wrong or right, and if they had enough dominance that any attention needed to be paid to who was talking and what was being said. Scree because of his size had the least dominance, if he was chewing on the tattered end of a pine cone any of the litter could take it from him, and he would let out his plaintive Scree in a higher pitch. If he found an acorn that had a bit of nut in it and he knew he would eat it before someone decided it was rightfully theirs he would let out his low pitched barking Scree, the Scree that would become his claim of ownership, the Scree that identified him.

For well over a month the inside of the old tree was the entire world to the baby squirrels. They learned to climb and fall down the insides of the wooden cavern they lived at the bottom of. Scree was first to climb and went the furthest because he was usually on the run from someone. The largest male was dominant and he would chase one of the smaller squirrels who would turn to someone smaller for vengeance and it went on down the line. Scree was usually set upon several times during each episode of aggression by someone needing to vent and frequently found need of escape. He became very agile jumping, from one side of the hollow to the other and scrambling away from his siblings nipping teeth. He grew but his growth was never enough to get ahead of anyone in the order of dominance so quickness was his only protection. As the pups grew the nest seemed to become smaller and escape more difficult; it was only a matter of time before Scree found himself slipping through the hole and climbing the lightening blasted stress crease following the scent of his mother to where the light came from.

His first look out over the top of the shoot that led down to the hole momentarily blinded him, before that second all light had been filtered as it came down the shoot and into the nest. This was unobstructed, brilliant, immense and the longer he peered over the edge of the shoot the more he could see.

A squirrel’s eyes are designed to detect even the slightest of movements. Set out on the side of their heads they pick out hints of danger as it approaches from most directions, but to achieve this heightened ability to see enemies approach the balance of rods and cones inside the eye didn’t allow the perception of many colors, so to Scree everything he saw was a shade of gray somewhere between the brightness of the Sun and the darkness of the nest at night. Seeing great distances wasn’t a priority either, the confining walls of trees provided boundaries to how far that was even possible, but if anything moved through the woods in the near vicinity of a squirrel’s tree it was seen.

Far below him the forest floor spread out in patches of green and a multicolored carpet of last fall’s leaves. All around there were trees, many as large as the basswood his nest was in, some so small he could look down into the tops of them; bushy dark evergreen trees that it was difficult to see through, and others budding out in the first pastel green leaves of spring, an endless forest so thick it quickly became a blur and blocked out everything beyond. Scree announced to this world that he had arrived and was rewarded by answering barks from a dozen points in the surrounding woods. Slowly he crept out to sit on the edge of eternity, below him was his inheritance, above was the sky.

The air was warm and the heat came down with the light from its source a bright spot high above the tree tops. Scree looked towards the source but his eyes quickly closed and he looked away. As he made his initial appraisal of the world he felt the breeze ruffle his fur and with it came new smells. The intoxicating odors of foods he had only smelled on his mother when she had returned from foraging, but most of the scents were entirely new to him, some sweet and soothing, others bitter odors he knew instinctively he should avoid.

A shadow passed quickly over him and he flattened himself out on the edge of the entry way to his nest. On a limb that hung down from above a creature that moved gracefully through the air on feathered arms landed in a twisting arc. It was larger than Scree but not by much and didn’t seem intent on beating him up; it cocked its crested head first one way and then the other studying him closely and then let out a series of raucous noises as if scolding him. The Jay puffed up her feathers and bobbed its head up and down shrieking out a warning to the squirrel pup on the perils of acting foolishly and then sailed off into the spring air.

The longer he sat the more aware of the life around him he became. Birds of many sizes and shades flew by; tiny birds that flitted from limb to limb others that hopped up and down the branches and trunks of the trees probing into the bark with their pointy beaks, larger birds digging through the leaves on the forest floor, more of the crested scolding birds that seemed to always be upset about something. They all seemed to be busy either eating or looking for something to eat. High above him Scree heard a piercing sharp whistle of a cry and for a few moments all the activity ended as the birds seemed to freeze or disappear all together. A larger shadow moved across the ground near the base of the nest tree and Scree ducked down into the shoot. He froze there for several minutes trying to decide if he should crawl down to the safety of the nest or climb back to his watching spot. His curiosity won out so he scampered back up the shoot and tentatively poked his head out over the top.

In the distance a squirrel barked and soon another closer answered. Scree not fully understanding why called his name out into the late morning air. Near the nesting tree he heard a squirrel and Scree recognized his mother’s bark. He looked down and saw her digging through the leaves that had blown up against the side of a downed oak tree. She paused frequently, sitting up to listen and look around, always alert to her surroundings. A distant movement or sound sent her scurrying up a nearby tree; she ran out on a limb and froze there except for a rhythmic twitching of her fluffy tail. From the direction she looked Scree soon heard the stealthy approach of feet on leaves. The sound had been there before, Scree had noticed it even before his mother had ran up the tree, but it was just one of many noises that were new to him and he hadn’t paid any attention to it, but he realized now that it was getting louder every second.

First sound and then movement, and with the movement his mother barked a high warning sound that was answered by more squirrels in the distance. A fox paused at the edge of a nearby slough and seemed to be searching the trees with its predator’s eyes and sinister smile. The twitching of a squirrel’s tail told the fox where his meal had gone. He stared at Scree’s mother and then casually sat down wrapping its tail closely around its haunches as if bored and carefully licked all four paws. Everything stopped, the forest was quiet, but alert, and the fox seemed to realize that it was the center of attention for a multitude of eyes. Its grooming duties done the fox stood up, shook and then quickly padded off in the direction from which it had come.

Scree’s mother kept to her perch, her tail snapping nervously. She barked again and Scree’s voice joined her warning. She moved up and down oddly as if doing pushups on the tree limb, and then moved forward onto the side of the limb clinging there with her strong little toes, looking out from this new angle studying the direction the fox had gone. Still not satisfied that the danger was over she scurried higher in the tree stopping out near the end of a bouncing limb, and watched for movement that would prove the duplicity of predators. Seeing nothing didn’t seem to satisfy her; she called out again of danger and her tail continued to twitch. And then she did a miraculous thing, she ran further out on the branch and using the bounce of the limb jumped from one tree to the next and continued on her daredevil journey through the upper