Nuts to You

by Lynne Rae Perkins

  WHEN you were in the midst of it, it was “the racket.” As you got farther away from it, it was “the rumbling.” One thing you could say about it: it wasn’t hard to remember which way to run.

  As they hurried toward their imperiled home, TsTs and Jed tried to warn the creatures of the treetops, mostly the squirrels, but also some birds, chipmunks, what have you, about what was coming their way.

  At first, animals listened to them. The rumbling had already made them uneasy. They were nervous and jumpy. They were looking for explanations.

  But the farther the friends traveled, the harder it was to convince anyone. As the rumbling was muffled by foliage and dimmed by distance, it could barely be heard above all the other sounds of the world. How much more urgent was this cold wind rushing in, bringing heavy skies that swallowed up the treetops and let loose drops of icy rain. And when a few stray bits of snow were sighted falling in among the raindrops, instinct took over completely.

  Now squirrels looked blankly at Jed and TsTs, not even hearing what they said. Almost to a squirrel, they responded with the same six words:

  “Winter is coming. I must gather.”

  Only two squirrels along the way actually stopped and listened to their warning.

  The first was a big burly fellow, old and grizzled. A squirrel who had survived many dangers. He turned a black, still-shiny eye toward them.

  “Someone has said this sort of thing before,” he said. “Was it today? Was it yesterday? I can’t be sure.” He cocked his head. “I can’t hear any rumbling. Perhaps you are mistaken.” He smiled at them.

  “We saw it,” said TsTs. “We saw it with our own eyes.”

  “Gathering is for nuts,” said the burly old squirrel with a sage air. “Scattering is for danger.”

  This is an ancient squirrel saying along the lines of, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “But—” sputtered TsTs. “But—”

  “Come on, TsTs,” said Jed. “Good-bye, sir. When a tree falls in your forest, may the sound of it be distant.” This is another ancient squirrel saying. You can probably guess for yourself what it means. Jed said it to be courteous. But he was pretty sure that this time, it was not going to be true.

  The second squirrel who listened was a young reddish female.

  “That’s what the other one said,” she murmured, more to herself than to them. She spoke with only a faint trace of a reddish accent.

  “The other one?” asked Jed.

  “Squirrels passing through,” she said, thoughtfully. “Migrating like . . . like geese. Like robins. Like—like butterflies, for crying out loud. That’s not what squirrels do. Something isn’t right.”

  She spoke as if she were thinking aloud. She looked at them, studying them as if they held the secret to a puzzle she was trying to solve. A gust of wet wind blew her fur the wrong way, and she wrapped her tail around her shoulders. She held a seedpod close to her breast. It was clear that she was fighting the instinct to run with it and hide it.

  In the middle distance, a grating gravelly roar rose and fell. The three squirrels flinched.

  “It’s just like he described it,” said the reddish squirrel. “A bone-crunching racket.”

  TsTs and Jed exchanged glances.

  “He said ‘bone-crunching’?” asked TsTs.

  “What did he look like?” asked Jed. “This other squirrel?”

  The squirrel shrugged.

  “He was grayish,” she said. “Like you. Also—he wore a cap.” She patted the top of her head. “Also . . .” she added shyly, “he was handsome.”

  “What kind of cap?” asked TsTs. “Was it an acorn top?”

  “Yes,” said the squirrel. “With a sprig of something on top. Goldenrod, I think.”

  “He’s alive, then,” said Jed to TsTs.

  “And he’s heading home,” said TsTs. “Like us. Ahead of us.”

  TsTs and Jed embraced. They jumped up and down and spun around. Then, wanting to share their joy, they drew the reddish girl into their circle and spun around again and again. Being squirrels, they were able to manage all this without falling from the tree.

  “Thank you!” shouted TsTs as they spun. “Thank you for the good, good, good, good news!”

  Then, because even squirrels get dizzy, they sat down. Now it was the world that was spinning, and they laughed, waiting for it to stop. And it did.

  But the bone-crunching racket crescendoed a little louder. A little closer. Vibrations rippled and buzzed through their rumps and their footpads.

  “We’d better go,” said Jed.

  “Okay,” said TsTs.

  “I’m going with you,” said the girl squirrel with sudden resolve. Then, more uncertainly, “If that’s okay.”

  “It’s fine,” said TsTs, “but what about your family?”

  “I’m an orphan,” she answered, speaking simply and without self-pity. “A solitary. Long story. I’ll tell you all about it. But”—indicating with a nod the sound of shredding tree and the sharp whine that went with it—“I think we’d better talk while we move.”

  “What do we call you?” asked Jed.

  “Tchotchke is my name,” said the squirrel. “But you can call me Tchke.”*

  AS the three squirrels hurried along, Tchke told Jed and TsTs her tale.

  “I was just a pup,” she said, “when my mother and my brothers were flattened. I would have been flattened, too, except that I had stopped to eat a tulip. I was still too small to reach most tulips, but this one was tiny and low to the ground. My mother kept saying, ‘Hurry!’ but I couldn’t help myself. I popped it into my mouth. It was so tasty. But even as I was savoring it, something huge flashed by, and Mama and Buddy—”

  A tear escaped from the corner of her eye. For a moment it was a perfect crystal sphere on her cheek fur. Then she brushed it away.

  “Well, I have not been able to eat a tulip since,” she said.

  “I don’t mean to be stupid,” said TsTs quietly, “but what is a tulip?”

  “A kind of flower,” said Tchke. “Really tasty. At least that’s how I remember it.”

  “What was it that flashed by?” asked Jed.

  Tchke looked at them, amused.

  “You haven’t lived among humans, have you?” she said.

  “No,” said Jed.

  “We see them sometimes,” said TsTs. “But they don’t stay. They just pass through.”

  “Well, I grew up among them,” said Tchke. “Our grove was in one of their colonies. It was all right most of the time. They don’t actually come out of their nests all that often. When they do, they travel inside these big—I don’t even know how to explain them to you. Imagine a beetle that is as big as—as big as—just really big. So big the humans crawl inside of them and then, when they have traveled somewhere, they crawl back out. Undigested. And you’d better stay out of that beetle’s way!”

  “Because it steps on you?” asked Jed.

  Tchke considered. She didn’t know how to explain wheels. She didn’t understand them herself.

  “It would be like getting in the way of a huge boulder rolling down a hill. You would be smashed. Flattened. It happens fairly often because they move so fast, you can’t get out of their way. They come out of nowhere and, BAM.”

  “Crikey,” said Jed.

  “It sounds scary,” said TsTs.

  “So, what did you do?” asked Jed. “Who took care of you?”

  “I moved into my grandfather’s nest,” said Tchke.

  “Where was your father?” asked TsTs gently.

  “Raccoon,” said Tchke matter-of-factly. “At least that’s what I was told. I never knew him. But my grandfather was very kind and very wise. He taught me so much. He told me stories. He knew more than any squirrel I’ve ever met. Of course, he was also very old.”

  “Are squirrels wise because they’re old?” mused Jed. “Or old because they’re wise?”

  “That’s something you could wonder about a
ll day,” laughed TsTs. “Probably it works both ways.”

  “But even if a squirrel is very, very wise,” said Tchke, “he can only get so old. As the poem goes, ‘Squirrels are fleet, and life is fleeting, gather ye nuts and feast while yet ye may.’” (This sounds better in squirrel. It rhymes and it has a lot of clicks.)

  “So, my grandfather had this idea,” she went on. “All his life, he had wanted to see how far he could travel without touching the ground. It was because of the Ancient Stories that tell of how a squirrel could once travel from one edge of the world to the other this way.

  “‘I think it can still be done,’ he said to me. ‘We might have to backtrack, look for new paths, but I would like to see the edge of the world for myself. And I would like to get there without touching the ground.’

  “‘Would you like to go with your old grandfather?’ he asked. He was probably growing foolish in his age. And I was still foolish in my youth. Of course I went. At first it was exciting. It is always a lark to look for a new path, to find one where none seems possible.

  “But as we traveled, I began to notice that Grandfather was faltering. There were jumps that should have been easy, but now he was barely grasping the landing. He chuckled and acted as if it was nothing. But we both knew what was happening. I tried to watch out for him.

  “‘I’m tired,’ I would say. ‘Let’s take the easy path.’ Or, ‘Let’s stop for today.’

  “But there was a part of him that would not, could not give up. He really wanted to make it to the Edge. I was a little afraid of it, myself. I mean, what if we fell off? What then?”

  “I cannot even imagine it,” said TsTs. “My brain is not that big. Are you sure there even is an Edge?”

  “It’s an old-fashioned idea,” said Jed. “Some squirrels think the forest is endless. Some think it circles back and meets itself. But no one really knows. At least, no squirrel has returned to tell us.”

  “Well,” Tchke went on, “my grandfather wanted to find out. And one day, he thought we had found it. The Edge. And it really did look as if we had. He crept out to the end of the last branch. He waved good-bye, then he stepped off into the fog.

  “I waited there for a long time,” she said. “Overnight and into the next day. The fog lifted and I could see, far below, a river. There was more World on the other side of it. This wasn’t the Edge, but my grandfather, one way or another, was gone.

  “By this time, we had journeyed far from our home. We had taken many winding paths. I backed away from the Edge and turned around. But I did not know how to find my way home. Eventually, I settled. So that is why I am solitary.

  “But,” she said. “The story you told of the shredding and scattering. It’s a story my grandfather told. He had seen it, too. That’s why I listened. To the other squirrel, and to you. That’s why I came along.”

  A good story makes a journey go by more quickly. A really good story makes you forget you are even on a journey. You don’t notice the cold, wet winds that spatter your fur with silver droplets. You don’t realize when you step from one branch to another, or even that your feet are moving. You stop noticing, with all of your senses, the things you really ought to notice. What sort of things? If you are a squirrel, there are so many kinds to watch out for:

  The kind that rumbles in the distance.

  The kind that follows stealthily, downwind, and licks its chops when you pause.

  The kind that is a dead branch that has been holding to its tree by a few fibrous strands, then fewer strands, then one strand, and then that one strand breaks and the branch-falls-through-theairaboveyouandWATCHOUT!

  The kind where vapor freezes in the clouds into small roundish masses of ice that fall and suddenly, instead of drops of rain or even snow, icy balls the size of walnuts are pelting your pelt. That’s the kind that happened now.

  The hungry fox, who had been following the squirrels from below, flinched as his pelt was pelted with ice balls. He forgot his focus on food and scrambled for shelter in a lean-to formed by fallen firs.

  The squirrels, too, ducked and raced for cover from the hailstones. Jed and Tchke flattened themselves against what they hoped was the safer side of a tree trunk. Then they heard TsTs shout, “Here! Up here!”

  They looked up and saw her head poking out from a hollow in the tree. Quickly, they climbed up and crawled in beside her. Together they watched the wintry mix of drops and flakes and hailstones fly willy-nilly down from the heavens.

  It was a good time to stay put. It was a lousy time to try to convince anyone to move. They didn’t even want to move their own selves out of the small shelter they had found. The view outside the knothole was the opposite of a fireplace, but just as hypnotic. Huddled together for warmth, they watched the storm rage, transfixed. The light of day, already dimmed by the thick heavy clouds, faded further, to black. The wild song of the wind, muffled by the curved walls around them, lullabyed the three squirrels into sleep.

  AFTERNOON darkened into evening. The air grew colder. It grew mean and spiteful, gathering its forces and hurling drops, slushy flakes, and icy pellets at Chai. He turned his back to the winds and rubbed his face. Night was falling. He could not keep going, especially in this weather. He was tired. He was cranky. He was forgetting to be careful. He made his way to the ground in the way that you might make your way from the living room to your bedroom. He dragged leaves and bits of brush into a lazy heap in the way you might arrange the covers you left in such a mess this morning. This is fine for you. There are probably no bobcats lurking in the bathroom, waiting to pounce on you as you pass by.

  The bobcat may have been tired and cranky, too. Maybe that’s why he carelessly snapped a twig as he moved closer to the tasty snack that had suddenly come into view.

  Chai’s fur stood on end. He sniffed the air. He felt the presence of the big cat. Fear gave him one last burst of energy and he took off, his paws barely meeting the ground. Aware of nothing but the need to hide, he frantically scanned the murkiness ahead. Was that a crevice? It was. Hallelujah. In he went.

  It was narrow. Not too deep, but deep enough. Deeper than the length of a bobcat’s arm. He flattened his back against the wall and pulled in his gut. Almost immediately, bobcat claws reached in, exploring. Chai felt the pointy tips graze his fur hairs. But he did not move. He did not breathe or make one sound. The bobcat withdrew his paw and sniffed at the opening of the crevice.

  Satisfied that the snack was still in there, the bobcat lay down. The fact that the crevice was in the entry to a small cave was a piece of good luck for him. Sheltered from the storm, he settled in. There was a little empty place in his stomach that he wouldn’t mind filling, but he wasn’t in a hurry. He could wait.

  His eyes sucked in the last shreds of light the stormy evening had to offer and reflected them back out into the darkness. They appeared to Chai as faint yellow spheres within the large black bobcat shape. It was hard for him to separate the bobcat from the general darkness except that the cat was darker and closer and warmer. He could smell its scent. He could feel its warm breath waft over him in waves when the bobcat exhaled.

  It was an odd feeling to be somewhat grateful for that warmth on this bone-chilling night, knowing all the while that if he emerged even slightly from his crevice, the warmth would envelop him and become even warmer in a moist, painful, fatal way. The thought gave him pause. Or rather, “paws.” Ha-ha. He smiled weakly at his little joke. The situation was not funny, though. In the chill between bobcat breaths, Chai shuddered.

  He looked out at the yellow eyes and the black shape. He felt the warm breath. He was hungrier than the bobcat was. He was on the verge of fainting from hunger. Mixed with terror. After a time, he slumped, not so much falling asleep as collapsing. It was as if his body said, “If this is the end, I’d rather not know about it.” Still pressed against the wall, the bottom parts of him slid out away from it, just a little. Within reach of the bobcat, although he wasn’t paying attention just then.

/>   (A note: Maybe you have heard the expression “between a rock and a hard place.” Now you know what it means. The “hard place,” in this situation, was the bobcat.)

  FOR hours, the storm blustered and banged outside the tree where TsTs, Jed, and Tchke slept. The very same storm slammed and rollicked around the cave where Chai had collapsed in the cold crevice. It howled and pelted, whirled and whined; it spit and sprayed and showered. Its winds were fierce. Its wetness was inescapable. Every living thing caught out in the icy fury curled in on itself, shivered, shriveled, shrank.

  And then, while everyone’s eyes were squeezed shut, the storm rattled and whimpered and spun its way to somewhere else. The air stilled. The stars emerged.

  In the crevice, Chai opened his eyes and blinked. He sensed that something was different. Something had changed.

  He realized that the bottom of him had slid within reach of the bobcat’s claws. Stealthily, moving one paw at a time, he worked his way back up to a standing position. The rock wall behind him was wicked cold. Not the sort of thing you wanted to nestle up to, given the choice. But nestle up he did.

  By the time he was on his feet again, his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. And Chai noticed two things. One was that the darkness wasn’t so dark. The form of the bobcat was edged by moonlight. He could make out, easily, the peaceful rising and falling of the bobcat’s furry ribs.

  Also, the noise of the storm had subsided. He could still hear the sound of moving air, but now the air was moving in and out of the bobcat’s nose. The bobcat was snoring. Which meant the bobcat was asleep.

  Since bobcats are creatures who hunt by night, he knew that the bobcat was just napping. So it might be now or never. Chai saw that. Still, to run toward the mouth and claws of a bobcat went against everything that was in him. He moved closer, paused, listened. Should he go on?

  He waited for the next snore.

  And waited.

  And waited. Chai glanced back to see how far he had come from the relative safety of the wall. As he did, the snore came, a loud ripping one, and he jumped. There was a halt in the middle of the snore, and he froze. Then the rest of the snore, a soft, trailing, farting wheeze.