Decks and squirrels

So, we finally found a builder who was interested in fixing up our decks. He sent waterproof deck coating samples, returned telephone calls, quoted a price, all the things I was naïvely expecting builders to do when I started the quest.

This morning he turned up with 3 friends at 7am to start work. I guess in Texas you have to get the work done early, before the temperature gets too high.

So it was that I came to be awake early enough to see a baby squirrel, the first youngster to visit us. He was exploring next door’s fig tree, learning how to not fall off branches. Meanwhile, a couple of adult squirrels were moving from fig to fig, testing each one to see if it was ripe.

After a while the youngster moved onto the front lawn to frolic. He rolled in the grass, ran around in circles, and practiced leaping from ground to telegraph pole and back. He also tried some gratuitous hole-digging; clearly somewhere in his genetic code is the knowledge that squirrels dig. When he masters food-gathering, he should be ready to learn burying.