I was sitting 20 feet high in a thick red oak, the forest floor spread out below me. My lofty perch afforded a view not available to a ground dweller. From the ground, brown brush, thick and tangled, formed a visual wall. But once up in the tree stand, I could see over the brush for a good distance.
It was an acorn year, which is why I was there in that particular tree on a mid-October morning. Deer had worked the glen the night prior, as evinced by fresh tracks punched into the brittle leaves and a pile of dark droppings.
They might come again to feed on the acorns below me. Silently, dressed in the colors, shades, and shapes of the branches around me, I waited.
While the sunrise behind me gilded the topmost branches, two gray squirrels noisily gathered acorns from the forest floor. They had come down from a hollow limb in a nearby oak – the first peeking from the den’s hole and surveying the surrounding trees, then the other one slipping up beside it and then out, clinging to the bark. Each tracking the other, they scratched down the tree for the morning’s feed.
With no prior warning, the tranquility was broken by a hurtling feathered mass that arrived over my right shoulder, sailed past my tree, and smashed into the forest floor. The two gray balls scattered and scampered up a nearby tree, clinging to and flattening themselves against the protective trunk. The red tailed hawk regarded each from the forest floor and appeared to be collecting himself after the impact of his missed attack. The squirrels, safe in the tree, scolded the hawk.
Composed now, the hawk opened his wings to their full four-foot span, lifted them, and then beat them down, raising his body into the air. Winding off through the forest, he announced, “Scree, scree, scree,” and made a direct line to the west, out over Snipatuit Pond. The squirrels became silent, perhaps watching as I was, and the hawk’s flight was marked by the cadence of his cries.
When the hawk had flown perhaps a quarter of a mile, nearly out of hearing, he went silent and made a 90-degree turn to the south. I could see this from my tree, but I doubt the squirrels took note. The synchronized silence and sharp turn aroused my curiosity. I wondered at the hawk’s behavior while the sun warmed the woods and the squirrels returned to foraging. I pulled myself further into my wool clothing and pressed myself to the tree, relaxing.
Fifteen minutes later, the hurtling ball again passed over my right shoulder and slammed into the ground, pinning an instantly dead squirrel beneath it. How magnificent was the raptor’s deception! I’d always thought of hawks as opportunistic predators, yet there was a relentlessness here that surprised me. It almost seemed as though there’d been a plan – the hawk’s noisy retreat and silent turn a ruse to lull its prey into complacency.
The hawk spread its wings and flew silently out of the glen, this time with the squirrel clasped in its talons.
The surviving squirrel sat on a branch overlooking the scene of its mate’s demise. A soft keening rose from its throat. The words of Jean-Luc Marion came to mind: “It is not our death that matters; it is the death of the one we love.” For 45 minutes, the squirrel cried and stared at the empty forest floor.
We each sat in our trees while the sun continued on its arcing path, warming the forest around us. The trees commenced their morning shed, the upper branches releasing a riot of color. I sat knowing what I had seen, yet incredulous that a hawk would plan and a squirrel would grieve and a man would imagine his kind the only one capable of planning and mourning.
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