In the past when describing my studio in the back yard I have mentioned that there is a lot of noise out there. The roof to my studio is made of opaque corrugated plastic that lets in a lot of nice light during the day but it is uninsulated and acts like a drum when things hit it. The wind knocks acorns and small branches out of the oak tree and when they hit the roof they sound like gunshots. Pow!

And sometimes the birds are up there scratching around looking for bugs in the detritus that collects.

And sometimes the squirrels have fights or at least they are playing chase up there. They make quite a racket racing across the thin membrane of the plastic.

I have mentioned to people that there is also a sound that sounds like a squirrel has fallen out of the tree onto the roof. This sounds like an explosion and very startling.

The idea that squirrels are falling out of the oak is met with skepticism.

Well, this morning, while I was drinking my coffee out on my deck, I was watching the sun brighten the day and there were a couple of squirrels playing chase in the oak. They circled the trunk and went out on the branches and in general behaved like squirrels do in mating season; lots of frantic activity.

Then, believe it or not, I saw a squirrel miss a branch. It was upright and its little arms were spread wide but it didn’t have enough momentum to make it to the branch it was aiming for and it seemed to hesitate at the top of its arc. Then it fell 15 feet straight down like Wile E. Coyote off the edge of a cliff. It did not land on the roof of the shed but I heard it hit the weeds on the ground next to it. I did not see or hear it after that.

I think it is safe to assume that squirrels are adapted to sometimes losing it – I have never found a wounded squirrel squashed in the weeds or a squirrel skeleton on the roof of the shed. They are frequent road-kill but I think cars are the danger in that case. And their lack of brains.