A Fall From Grace

I described my neighborhood - in the frame of reference for the abundance of piedmont readers - as "Trinity Park with palm trees" a few months back. Well, the biggest palm on the block is at the corner two houses up from mine and its crown is home to a handful of squirrel, a few pigeon, a family of swallow, and (on tell from the neighbor whose house is closest to it) an owl.

Now what an owl would be doing... No. Scratch that...What a squirrel would be doing raising it's young in such close proximity to a raptor like an owl makes me wonder what mammalian traits are ready for elimination. But the squirrel seem fully content in their routine and, yes, a few weeks ago I spied what appeared a Screetch owl perched quietly on a domestic service powerline directly across the street from the wildlife apartment so regularly full of chatter from its less hushed tenants.

My experience living in a (barely) renovated tobacco barn with squirrels residing in its roof made me easily understand these creatures as ignorant, annoying, filthy, and worthy of elimination upon the slightest invasion of civilized space. To have avoided having the rest of the animal kingdom rise up in revolt against them, slaughtering them to a one, is one of ecology's great injustices.

To watch anyone succeed in a life endeavor is - to some extent - to size them up by way of their accomplishment as talented or lucky. The same holds true for failure: incompetence or misfortune.

As I retrieved my son at the end of a visit to the house of the same neighbor who first brought the owl's presence to my attention a couple of nights ago shortly after sunset, a chattering in the palm tree grabbed my ear. Rustle. Shake. Thump.

The long-dead base of a palm frond fell from the bottom of the crown, about 50 feet up, and suspended about half an inch above it was a squirrel, looking stright down, motionless save the rush of air wisping the fur on its erect tail.

Thwack! The frond base - a chunk of dried wood about 5 inches cubed - hit the curb spilling the rodent out into the street. A car passed over it, the driver oblivious or at least uninterested or unable to stop. Somehow tire and squirrel failed to occupy the same space at the same time. The squirrel paused, looked up at me as if to plot revenge, and slowly made his way to the base of the palm tree and begin his ascent. Whether it was relief, disorientation, or a keen sense of humor that kept his upward movements confirmed and retarded I will never know.

But I looked up and that owl watched the whole damn episode from the powerline across the street.