A Snowy Spring Squirrel Saga

It has been snowing today.  And blowing.  And two people I know totaled their cars in accidents on the crazy roads around here.  It is the kind of day where everyone needs to just stay home. In their jammies. In bed. With a book. Only I don't know anyone who has done this. We have messed up priorities.

As I was not in my jammies and not in bed, but instead I was moving a table in my bedroom so that I could VACUUM under it and wipe down the baseboards for the first time in...

Anyway, I happened to glance out the window to see a squirrel moving along the top of this fence:

He was scurrying on the snow on the top of the fence under that tree, and then when he got to that higher place of snow (right arrow), he burrowed under. It looked like he just vanished! But then he reappeared at the left arrow, where you see the break in the snow. Yep! He had tunneled through all that snow and didn't knock off one flake. Until... he scrambled and almost fell (notice the break in the snow). But he didn't fall. He caught himself. Oh, but then he lost his grip and, Kerplunk! Right into the white powder below him. I didn't see anything moving, and I imagined him face down in two feet of snow with no arms to help him get out of there. But it wouldn't matter that he didn't have arms to push himself up and out, because even if he had them, they wouldn't be two feet long so they would be of no use in that deep stuff. I never did see him get up. I got interrupted. Maybe he's still there. Oh, I should have gone outside and pulled him out of the snow and given him mouth to mouth. Big human mouth to little squirrel mouth. But I didn't. If he truly never got up, he would be dead by now. And frozen. But I think I saw him running around in the tree just to the left of this photo. If it wasn't him, I swear it was his twin. What an amazing little trooper!

Next time it snows like this, maybe he will stay inside. In his jammies. In bed. With a book.