At my sister’s wedding in September, I had a conversation with her grandmother-in-law about squirrels. She’s from Texas. She was baffled at the boldness and number of squirrels in my parents’ backyard, chirping from the fences, playing with the bluejays and sparrows at the neighbors’ birdfeeders. Later in the season, they devoured the pumpkins my mom tossed into the garden for them. A murder scene, she told me. Pumpkin guts everywhere, seeds all but annihilated. I cannot imagine a life without squirrels, but apparently they are a rarity in the desolate corner of Texas my brother-in-law hails from.
On winter mornings, I brave the cold in the hopes that I’ll catch sight of dark-eyed juncos (my favorite winter songbird). When I lived blissfully close to a nature preserve, I’d familiarize myself with the animals there.
Larry Bird, a redtail hawk named by the local kindergartners, would often get into territorial spats with the great horned owl that shared his territory by night. They displayed their rivalry in a tree directly over the path. I was often a spectator, as was the great blue heron that spent his mornings sunning himself beside the water and did not mind my company. Sometimes I’d get lucky there and spot the mother fox and her kits on their morning rounds, or hear the coyotes in the fields beyond. I was never the only one watching, of course — the local murder overnighted in the trees surrounding the pond and spent their mornings begging for fries in the Burger King parking lot. That’s quite a number of watchful eyes.
Living on the front range of the Rockies my entire life, I find it difficult to conceive of a world without bear-proof trash cans. Deer cross at the crosswalks in the city where I went to college, and more than once a black bear stole someone’s car and wrecked it. I’ve caught glimpses of bobcats, taken my morning coffee with elk avoiding the tourist traffic by sheltering in my quiet campsite, and nearly spooked myself off a horse when it spotted a moose.
Sometimes I take long drives northeast during the hunting season to watch the pronghorn antelope graze. Clever beasts, they know you’re not allowed to shoot within 200 feet of a road. October is prime viewing season for these herds, they gather right where you can see them.
Sometimes, I think about moving. There are academic opportunities for me in Europe, but I feel terrible for leaving my friends behind. How am I to pass the seasons without my juncos and goldfinch? Would the red deer sit for coffee with me as the elk do? If I’m taking a walk in the woods, will I catch a glimpse of the bobcats? Will I hear the coyotes sing? Well, I won’t hear the coyotes in Europe for certain. Those beasts are purely American, and close to my heart at that.
I figure, then, that a life without brave little squirrels is no life at all. I can see no better way to humble humanity than for a bear to take your car on a joyride from time to time, and no better companion on my walks than the ravens come down from the mountains. I wish all places were like this, where the boundaries between the wild and the urban blur so completely that my walking companions may be as bird as beast as human.
from the pen of icarus blake 
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