A Hungry Winter

Sam the Squirrel stood on guard in front of his hole, in which he stored his acorns for Winter, and scanned the forest for threats. Sam spent every day watching and listening, and knew that the forest should be silent. Sometimes, to trick him into looking, a chunk of ice let go of a branch and made a noise when it fell into the snow. A thief could employ that diversion. To survive a conniving world, he must remain vigilant. 

A few trees away, Alicia the Squirrel and her daughter, Em the Squirlet, curled up in their shared warmth for one final morning. Only two acorns and a few pieces of bitter mushroom, about a day’s worth of food, remained in their hole. Em was not big enough to withstand the cold. To find more food, Alicia had to venture into the snow alone.

Outside, the snow captured all sound and made the forest silent. Alicia looked up at the fir trees, stripped of their green by the season, and saw farther than she could in any Spring. It impressed her that at the end of Winter, after spending months exposed to this cold with no warm hole to rest in, the trees would eagerly greet the sun with fresh green needles and their enduring optimism.

Woven into the roots of an old fir tree, Alicia found a fairy ring of Amanita mushrooms. Any one of them could feed her and Em both for two days, and so she decided to take only one for now in case another mother daughter ran out. She reached her paws down into the dirt and separated the stalk. With the stalk over her shoulder she turned to scurry home, but found another squirrel in her way.

Sam had been watching the thief. She kept her distance, pretending to be interested in a ring of mushrooms a few yards from his lookout, not even glancing toward his hole so as to lower his guard. He could hardly stomach the sick scheming. Of course as soon as she took the mushroom out of sight, she would wait for him to follow her and that’s where he would find the ambush. Once her team had captured him, the stash of acorns he had worked so hard to amass and protect would be defenseless. They would eat them all and become fat.

Unable to suffer the indignity any longer, Sam equipped two pine cone blades, his weapon of choice, and cornered the would-be hiester. She paused to calculate her next move. Her true nature exposed, her dreams of growing fat on Sam’s acorns crushed, how would she come to terms with her fate?

Cautiously she lowered the mushroom onto the snow between them, probably to delay him as she made a run for her life. Unfortunately for this ne’er do well, Sam was a practiced cap jumper, known to run entire fairy rings without once touching ground or root.

But she did not run. She slowly approached another mushroom and pulled it from the ground. Then, with the new mushroom to extend her reach, she pushed the first mushroom toward Sam until it lay at his feet. She bowed, and walked off in the other direction.

Sam dropped his pine cone blades in the snow, and touched the mushroom. He looked at the other mushrooms in the ring, which the squirrel he suspected of being a thief could easily have carried home as part of her harvest. He realized it was a gift.

Sam looked up at the branches of the forest and, in a strange and unfamiliar feeling, felt they deserved rest, that protecting the ground which was his home from the rain and winds of the other seasons had earned them at least one season of reprieve. He carried the mushroom home and used it to cover the entrance to his hole. With the cover placed, it became warm. Sam leaned back and put his paws behind his head, at ease.

He met a stranger, and that stranger gave him a gift. Though Sam knew strangers were all different, and that unlike for this rare squirrel most of them betray him for a single nut, he could not help but feel the concept of a stranger felt a little warmer to him. Whoever this stranger was, he decided they were on the same side in life.

Two days later when the squirrel who gave him the mushroom returned to the fairy ring, Sam watched from a high branch. He had to know where she lived. He followed from above as she scurried with her mushroom through the snow, hopping from branch to branch. Half an acre into the forest she met a young squirlet outside a hole, and crawled in with her. She had a daughter.

Sam geared up at home. Armed with his pinecone blades and carrying a large filled pack, he rolled the mushroom out of the entranceway and climbed up the surface.

The mission gambled his life, but Sam looked forward through the trunks and snowy winds with a sense of providence. He was intoxicated by the idea that the value of his own life could only be gained by putting it at risk on that day. And so, with his full pack a beacon for violent scavengers and preventing him from fleeing predators or taking the safe path through the branches, he charged into the snow.

The snow gave way beneath his paws as he stomped forward, pulling the pack tied around his shoulders. He jerked his head side to side as he marched, assessing the snap of each twig for danger. His path remained clear until the stream just before his destination.

A fox stood on the opposite shore and lowered its head to drink the stream water. Sam froze and watched. He should have moved, run back down the hill and out of sight, but he could only imagine himself in the fox’s mouth. His head and paws hung limply at the corners of the fox’s jaw and he bled when the fox shook him.

Movement downstream caught the fox’s eye. From Sam’s position on the bank he could see the source better, and with horror he recognized the squirrel and her daughter whom he had ventured so far to meet. They were walking deep in the snow and could not see the imminent threat.

As Sam thought, they seemed to slow down, and the fox seemed to freeze. He had tied his pack on too tightly, so he could not throw it as a distraction. But if he did nothing, the squirrel and her daughter would surely be eaten.

No battle had tested Sam’s blades before, and a fox would defeat even the strongest squirrel. To fight the fox was to die.

When Sam closed his eyes he saw the future of their forest. He saw a future where his two friends, and many squirrels like them, met at the fairy rings in the Spring to relax in the sun and jump the caps. He saw squirrels visiting each other’s holes in the Winter and giving food to those who had too little. He saw a world he wanted but that he would never be part of.

Sam rushed toward the fox and the fox killed him. It shook his pack off and wandered upstream to eat.

That evening when Alicia and Em came to the stream for a drink, Em noticed acorns falling out of a large pack on the opposite bank.