~by Colleen O’Brien
The birds are singing wildly – it’s noon on a cloudless prairie day that’s heating up toward 90 degrees. I watch a nuthatch run down a 20-foot oak trunk as if something’s chasing him; a beige dove ducks under a limb, and a vain, unusually brilliantly red cardinal, the male of course, struts along a clothesline so all critters can admire him. I hear a woodpecker nearby-– a kind of annoying bird if one’s in a bad mood already but perfectly okay for this day.
A dozen house wrens chat all at once on the porch railing. It is a morning so lovely, they’re surely celebrating being alive – or changing their tune, for suddenly it is quiet in this oak savannah, quiet as a Saturday morning in a 21st-century farm town.
I’m unsure what caused the sudden silence. I see no slinking fox in the brush; I spy no hawk peering greedily from high in the forest.
It’s apparently just the heat — too hot for frivolity except for a young blonde-tailed squirrel who does not seem to feel the heat. He plays by himself in the grass. He jumps up, lands facing in the opposite direction, rolls in the dirt by the tree trunk, leaps to the tree about three feet up, jumps off and returns to his acrobatics in the grass.
I’ve noticed over the years of gazing out windows expecting the muse to hit at any moment, that squirrels like to have fun, especially the young ones. They bounce from one limb to another and disappear. They chase each other on fence rails, leap all of a sudden onto a phone line and half-way down the alley, flip over and hang upside-down. Fearless and funny.
This lone youngster is unusual. Now he’s standing up listening to two squirrels chipping angrily at him from high in an oak. He decides to ignore the parents and return to his antics.
I came out here to write, but I have to keep watching even though I’m on a deadline. My entertaining squirrel is too amusing to ignore. I’ll get nothing done ‘till he runs away.
~~
At another location much earlier on this Saturday morning, a less innocent and much less amusing act transpires. On his July 11, 2026, “X” midnight media, Mr. Trump writes what appears to be a memo-to-self:
“TRUMP IS THE BEST POLITICAL ATHLETE OF ALL TIME! CONGRATULATIONS, MR. PRESIDENT, YOU HAVE BEATEN US FOR 10 YEARS, AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO WASTE OUR TIME FIGHTING YOU ANY LONGER. WE CAN’T WIN. YOU DO A GREAT JOB, SIR, RUNNING OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
I read this note from Trump to Trump with dismay because it suggests our poor president cannot sleep.
He needs a good night’s rest, or he’ll never have as much fun as a squirrel.
