A rallying point for birds and squirrels is the improvised bird table suspended from a low branch of a mango tree in my garden in Wellawa near Kurunegala. How the visitors enchant me, tempting me to drop my housework to observe. The Palm Squirrels were particularly charming. “Watch us!”, the vivacious furry little fawn-hued balls seem to say, their banner tails whisking, eyes full of life’s effervescence, noses quivering, looping the loop through tangles of branches, always hurrying, scurrying on terribly urgent business.
What fun they have, pairs of them, somersaulting down the roof, hopping on to the electric cables, careening down poles, and vanishing into the trees. Daredevils these, springing and jumping in mid-air, a paw away from a precipitous fall, launching dangerously into the void but grasping at the very last second on to a slender twig.
The gymnastics did not go unnoticed by Rambo, our killer cat. However, feline stealth was nearly always more-than-matched by squirrel speed. A pounce by Rambo and the squirrels would just bounce away, a blur of panic, spiralling up the bole of a tree, disappearing into the dense canopy of leaves, and setting off a cacophony of high pitched alarms.
I surprised one at breakfast, sitting hunched in his haunches, forefeet holding a morsel of bread. He nibbled the food delicately, eyes ever alert. Wild he was, but unafraid. And he was in no rush to end the spell he cast over me. But the magical moment breaks and he slips out of sight as Rambo’s mother ambles up.
The squirrel watches and listens, crouching in a crotch of the mango tree as the tabby ambles off and then, emerges, still wary, hugging the tree, freezing from nose-tip to tail-end at the slightest noise.
I almost believe that squirrels are tree spirits, the highly visible ones, that live in amongst the leaves. What long and endless days they have, full of fun and adventure, nosediving into every arboured nook and corner, trailing secret delights, quite unaware of how they illumine our hours.
Kamala Gunasekera is compiling a memoir of her time spent in rural Sri Lanka
courtesy of A.C (Chuli) Yapa