Squirrels Don't Fly South

Rod considered himself an artist first and a squirrel second, and his true disdain for the owl tearing through his front door was the bird’s lack of appreciation for the intricately carved doorway. He had spent a whole autumn crafting it. The nerve! 

A giant yellow foot exploded through the door as if it was nothing more than a dead leaf. Talons dark and polished curled like iron crescent moons, twisting and snapping around the hollow as the owl tried to get a grip on its prey. In a brazen but successful move, Rod grabbed one of the talons and buried his large front tooth into its knuckle. The owl tore his foot out with a horrible shriek, nearly dragging Rod with it. He spat the taste of blood out of his mouth as the great bird flew off into the night.

“Good riddance!” he shouted after it, though his confidence proved to be short-lived. 

He looked sadly upon the shredded remains of his door, his only defense against the harsh realities of life in the woods. The sturdy oak slab might as well have been struck by lightning. An uneasiness fell over Rod, threatening to spill over into panic. That owl would be back. He couldn’t stay a minute longer, much less wait another year. He had no choice but to go against his original plan and flee right then. 

Tail bristling with agitation, Rod scrambled to the back of his den, tearing back the leaf covering of what he kept hidden safely in the back of the hollow. To anyone else, it was merely a worthless clump of branches and feathers, perhaps left over from an old nest. But to Rod, it was perhaps his greatest, if not strangest, creation yet. The bunches of feathers were from the geese that frequented the banks. He had spent countless seasons studying the birds flying south and back again, tracking the wind patterns of the area, using up countless bottles of ink on charting maps of where they would go, and setting to memorizing them all. He recently began practicing the different wing strokes. Yes, he was learning to fly. He was getting close, too, he was certain of it.

He scurried down his tree as fast as he could, shielding the artificial wings with his body, keeping low to the ground and close to the brittle leafy cover. He had to get to the lake, if it already wasn’t too late. 

Most of the geese had already left on their journey to their winter homes in the South, but fortunately for Rod, his good friend Greta was an incurable homebody and would stay as long as she could get away with. She may not have known what “bird brained” even meant, but flying was to her as swimming was to a fish. He spotted the goose, standing at the bank as she preened her lovely brown and white plumage.

“Greta -- err, I mean, Teacher! Teacher!”

Greta was touchy about her self-given title as his flight instructor, and he had no time for a flowery rant about the importance of respect needed to maintain the proper student-teacher relationship. He skidded to a halt on the sand thick with water.

“Ah, student Rod. What timing! I plan to leave this very night -- this very moment, in fact.” She eyed the messy bundle half falling out of his arms. “Do you plan on flying with us? You told me you planned to wait for a more favorable year.”

“The plan’s changed. I have to leave right now!”

She pointed with her elegant black beak. “That feather machine of yours, have you gotten enough practice? We’ll be flying against a storm, I’m afraid.”

Rod had tried once before. A fatal landing was prevented by a  miraculously placed bed of moss.

“I, well. . .no, not yet,” he lied. “The weather, you know. There haven't really been any thermals to ride.”

This was the first time Rod had seen her genuinely angry; he always assumed she lacked the capacity. 

“You can’t expect to make it all the way South by gliding pleasantly on thermals! Downstroke! Powerstroke! Does what I’ve painstakingly taught you mean anything?!”

She pumped her powerful wings with emphasis, nearly toppling him over. 

“Can’t you carry me at least part of the way? At the very least a boost to get over the lake? That owl means to kill me tonight!”

Greta looked around nervously as the last of the straggler geese began to take off. She stretched her wings to join them.

“Sorry, so sorry! You’re much too heavy! And if we wait any longer, we’ll be trapped by the snow. Good luck with the owl!” With that, Greta and the rest of the geese flew off. 

Not only was Rod a crafter of many things and a bird-in-training, he considered himself a true brainiac in a pinch, and was not one to give up when thrown in a tight spot. He raced back into the forest, stopping frequently to size up trees that showed promise. Finding one he deemed fit, a rather lanky young pine slouching over a small clearing not far from the shore, he climbed to the uppermost limb he could comfortably stand on.

Rod stood at the very end of the branch and surveyed, nose twitching. He was high enough over the trees to see the lake, smooth as glass and the color of chilled steel, and nothing stood between him and the stars. The forest floor became a black void dizzyingly far below his feet. If it had been a full moon, he would have been able to see every sharp rock and jagged log he could fall upon.

If he could just get over the lake and to the base of the mountain, maybe he could catch up with the geese before they were gone too long. To his tail he tied the bouquet of tail feathers, and to his arms the luxurious primary and secondary feathers. If he did not try now, he would never get the chance again. Tonight, he would fly further than that owl had ever been, with or without the help of the geese. 

Rod returned to the base of the limb to give himself a running start. Best not overthink these things. As he was nearing the end, he began flapping furiously, trying to bring everything Greta had taught him to the front of his mind all at once. Flap hard, but not too much. Spread wings, trust the air, and -- JUMP! 

For a fraction of a second, he was airborne. The next, something powerful struck his side. His blood turned to ice. The owl! Rod was plummeting straight down in a whirlwind of feathers. It was as if a large mottled bird had exploded mid-flight. A branch struck his stomach as another swiped his face.

He desperately tried to salvage the landing and hit the ground rolling. And kept rolling. He couldn't stop! The world was pitch black in a flash, and suddenly warmer. 

He eventually came to a stop, sore and incredibly dizzy, but alive.

Where Rod found himself now was completely lost on him. It was a strange new world to Rod, one void of sight and teaming with unfamiliar smells. It had to be some sort of immense, underground den. He crawled around on all fours to try and get a bearing. The pungent smell of damp earth grew stronger the further he went. Spindly ends of roots occasionally scraped his back, making him shudder. The air moving around him suggested that there was an incredible maze of different tunnels, not just the one. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw something odd. An assortment of things were half buried in the earth. Shiny stones, seeds of all shapes and sizes, and many, many rolls of parchment halfway stuck into the floor, wall, and ceiling.

One in particular caught the squirrel’s eye above all else. It was one of many pieces of parchment, rolled up and shoved into the dirt wall like the others. What made it different was the feather sticking out of the middle of it. A goose feather. He pulled it out and recognized it instantly as one of his blueprints for his wings, blown out of his hollow by a windstorm the previous summer.

Rod stiffened. Something was coming from one of the tunnels. Something big. A large head like a dog’s was suddenly looming over him, with a white-striped face and big flat feet. A badger. The hoary color of his paws and muzzle gave him a ghostly appearance.

“Please, don’t try to eat me, too!” Rod cried. 

The badger scoffed. “Me? Eat a wiry thing like you? Rubbish! Much too hard on my gums.”

The badger caught sight of the dirt-caked blueprint in Rod’s grip.

“I’ve been watching you for some time. Your quest to fly fascinates me.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but there’s no way I’ll fly out of this place. That owl outside destroyed my wings.” Rod tossed the useless parchment aside.

The badger rolled up the blueprint and stuffed it back into its place in the wall. “Good. Yes, this is very good.”

Rod stared at the badger. “Excuse me, but is dirt clogged in those stubby ears of yours? That owl is waiting for me outside and I can’t fly out of here. I’m going to die!”

“You may not be able to fly,” said the badger, tucking the feather in the scroll, “but you can climb. I’ve seen you leap from tree to tree, gathering your particular feathers and branches for your machine. You were flying more so then than when you wore someone else’s feathers.”

“But the owl can still catch me,” said Rod, recalling the many other tree-dwellers who were not as lucky as he. “Flying is faster than climbing and leaping.”

“Not if you use your wits. The branches thicken the further you go into the forest. If he gives chase, you can lose him there.”

“You want to help me. Why?”

The badger smiled kindly. “You remind me a lot of myself. As a cub, I dreamed of swimming with the otters. They tried to teach me, but I sank like a rock every time. No amount of bark for webbed feet or slicking down my fur with mud made me an otter. One day, I simply stopped trying.”

“You just gave up? But you seem so. . . so at ease.”

“I wasn’t at first. Living underground was more of a way to hide from my shame. Otters are quite the hecklers. But as I spent more time here, I found I liked to dig. Got quite good at it, too. There was something about it that came so naturally. Digging is just what I’m built to do.” 

Rod straightened up. “But I was so close! If it wasn’t for that owl, I would be flying, I’m sure of it!”

The badger sighed. “Sometimes it’s best to not go against nature, and to accept you will never be able to do something. There’s no shame in facing that fear. The sooner you let go of what you can’t, the sooner you will cling to what you can, and the peace that comes with it.” 

Rod said nothing. The badger suddenly pricked his ears.

“I sense danger. You should leave while you still can, before the owl figures out where you are. My place is underground, not yours.”

As they neared the burrow’s exit, Rod pondered what he was told. He recalled the sensation of jumping tree to tree, the rush of air and burst of excitement that came with it. Was that truly what he wanted all along -- what he had been doing in the meantime of chasing greatness?

The badger stopped a good length before the hole. “Go quickly, before it sees you.” 

Rod hesitated. “I don’t know how to thank you --”

“Go! Hurry!”

Rod sprang from the den and scampered across the open forest floor. The owl’s shriek was instant as it dived from the sky like a bark-colored missile. The owl’s talons dug deep into the earth where he had been a moment before. Rod bolted straight up the trunk of a pine and was nearing the uppermost branches without fully realizing it. For a wild moment he thought of jumping straight up to the moon to escape.

“East! Go East!” 

The badger was calling to him from the mouth of his burrow. Rod snapped out of his daze and made a sharp right, running down the length of the thin branch. His stomach dropped as it bent dangerously with his weight. He leapt without thinking. The branch catapulted, giving him a thrill of air and speed. Landing was shaky, but he lost little speed. He did this again and again, left right, up down, the forest flying passed him in a greenish black blur.

Rod pushed what he learned from Greta out of his mind and embraced his gut instincts. Amidst the terror fueling the run for his life, his chest swelled with excitement as he locked onto branch after branch, action coming before thought. Once more, he heard the shrill cry of the owl, furious that its prey was again getting away. He kept concentrated forward, even as he felt the wind stir over his ear as a talon narrowly missed taking off his head. He made a sudden turn straight up and back. There was a great whoosh of air as the owl stumbled just below him, then the deafening racket of many branches being broken at once. He risked a glance behind to see the owl tangled at a peculiar angle, then never looked back again.

Rod sailed through the trees until the light of dawn crept over the hills. Paws aching, the birds were well on with their morning songs and routine scuffles before he finally came to a stop. The land he found himself in was unfamiliar, clustered with wider, leafless trees instead of the rigid, always green pines. It was colder here, and the air stiller. The owl was nowhere to be found. He clumsily descended and collapsed beneath the shelter of a dry patch of withered bracken at the base of a tired oak tree. He would have to find a new hollow quickly, but a short rest was urgently needed. 

Try as he did to sleep, Rod was kept awake by residual buzzings from his flight through the trees. It was flight, wasn’t it? Gliding, perhaps. But still, he now had a glimpse of what birds felt when they would take off, and he would hold it tight for as long as he lived.

As the first flurries of the late autumn blizzard quietly ambushed the barren trees, his last thoughts before he finally drifted off were of the badger. If his burrow-plowing made him feel like Rod did when leaping, he hoped the old badger would end up digging the biggest, deepest burrow the world had ever seen.