My back patio is made up of long concrete rectangles separated by narrow wooden boards to decorate the space that gives the concrete room to expand and contract with the weather.
I have my squirrels trained: they are free to graze on their half under the birdfeeder, but they may not step past that lengthwise wooden barrier (augmented by a few amaryllis pots); the peanut-suet crumbles are for the ground birds only.
It’s been months since I’ve seen one cross that line. They’ve been remarkably well behaved.
Which made today all the funnier. There was the small black female with the quirky tail standing up, front paws tucked in, looking occasionally between those pots towards the forbidden land but then turning away as expected.
And then I looked up again. She paced to the right and then splayed herself flat under the shade of the picnic table–and, staring at me, placed one paw deliberately on the concrete just barely on the other side of that wood. She knew I don’t ever climb under that table: this was hers.
Stayed staring. Waited for me to react. For something like a full minute, which is a very long time when you are eye to eye with a wild thing.
It was so human and so utterly like the two-year-olds I used to have that finally I could only burst out laughing.