It is the time of the young ground squirrels now,
on my porch on Piuma Road in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Only a month ago,
it was the time of the sentries.
Our house, where Suzanne and I live, was
well-guarded then.
There was one sentry on each end.
One was directly in front of my office glass door.
He stood up on his haunches, ever alert.
Sometimes he would bring his lunch, and eat it as I ate mine.
He was a pretty sloppy eater, dropping bits and pieces around.
The same could be said of me (and has been).
Somtimes he would scratch his back where it itched,
by sliding up and down a post.
Sometimes he would get tired, in his unnaturally upright posture,
and stretch an arm (front leg?) over the bird-bath for support.
At the other end of the house,
stood the propane-tank sentry.
He was ensconced in a foxhole (what a misplaced expression!)
beside the large white tank rented from Suburban Propane.
The sentinels had a serious purpose.
There were babies underground, in the burrows.
Snakes could slither down into those burrows.
All manner of other beasts,
with babies of their own to feed,
were seeking the vital proteins required
among the ranks of the peaceful herbivores.
When danger was espied,
the alarm bell would sound.
No one but a ground squirrel,
or a careful observer of the species,
with either too much time on his hands,
or looking for an excuse for not finishing the next chapter,
would have recognized the alarm as an alarm.
It sounded exactly,
and I do mean exactly and precisely,
like the chirping of a bird.
Had I not seen the squirrel’s mouth move,
in exact cadence with the sound,
I would not have believed that
the sound was not ornithological.
The alarm went “cheep-cheep-cheep-cheep-etc.”
Its distinguishing characteristic was its utter monotony.
There was no variation, no sliding jazz riffs,
as birds tend to add.
It was serious business.
Now the time of the sentries has ended.
The time of the young ground squirrels has begun.
For them the world began yesterday. All is new.
They take a chaw on the various flowers
that Suzanne has planted,
to see if any are to their liking.
They luxuriate in the seeds
that spill down from the feeders
that Suzanne has set out for the birds.
They chase each other around,
and engage in wrestling matches,
under the iron legs of the planters.
They stand at the glass door of my office, and look at me,
and with all their wiggly energy,
they seem to ask,
“So when are you going to finish, anyway?”
They do not remember the time of the sentries.
They do not know that their time as sentries will come.
By David L. Clark