Cricket Alley

            The area is between rivers, but that isn’t felt. What can be felt, as the sun rises over land so flat that no horizon is seen, is the hum from the television tower nearby. This is a metropolitan area of the fourth magnitude, and it awakens slowly, with the sound of music from the cars on the avenue; commuters trying to cut through the head-mud and sharpen themselves for the challenge of the day.

            The painted ladies flitter, weighed down by chill humidity, about the mostly-cultivated garden flowers, and the blocks vary. Some are filled with houses which were built with hope, but declined into asbestos-shingled somethings with sheet-drapes in the windows. Proud Budweiser Ice cans lie here and there in some of the small front yards, which are cut with perpendicular sidewalks leading to old, crumbling, concrete stoops. Other small sections have been gentrified. All of the houses are pretty in their own way, though, and there the oak trees tower like you have no idea. Seen from above, they look like kale atop a salad, upon which, one might look and say, ‘I know I ordered a salad, but, are you kidding me?’

            This is the section where Jake was born, and where care must be taken not to slip on the acorn shells while walking. The fences and sheds default into real, or faux, redwood. The inhabitants try. The grass is long, and can lie flat after the rain, staving off the need for mowing. Brown-eyed Susans volunteer where the land is shaded, and you can even see peonies where they weren’t meant, on the corners of properties, there in Oak Grove.

            No one knows why, but Jake migrated south from Oak Grove way back in ‘09. A best guess would be that, as towering as they are, oaks have their limit. All that is known is that he left. Perhaps was forced out. When asked about the oaks, and their seemingly unlimited harvest of acorns, Jake would say:

            “I didn’t see one of those acorns.”

            And Jake would lift his paws and shake his head.

            So, the squirrels multiplied there near the school, along an alley spoiled with crickets. The crickets can still be found in every nook and cranny there, and where there are crickets, there are garter snakes, but they aren’t the subject of this story. Garter snakes shun fame anyway.

            Among others, Jake begat Jake, who was part of the nuclear squirrel family we’re following. The mother of the kits was Sandy, who crossed on the lines, just once, like her sister, across 20^th avenue, but stayed. So, it was there that that particular scurry, with the crickets below, leaping about like dice thrown, formed. There was Jake, Sandy, Sparky and Clytemnestra.

            That family was born into the ‘tearing the sunflower blossoms down when the seeds are ripe, raiding the bird feeders, eating the shoots from the garden, and grabbing whatever else is edible’ industry there in the alley.

            Concerning the feeders, squirrels are both motivated by instinct, and a fable told to them when they are kits.

            “There was a nice squirrel, and he had many bird friends. Like any squirrel, he raided the bird feeders as was his due. But, as the feeder would empty more and more, he would listen to his feathered friends, and others with feathers, who were scolding: ‘Those seeds aren’t for you! They are for us, and you’re stealing them!’ So, he would feel guilty, and he would wind up leaving a few seeds for the birds.

            “Now, it was nice that the squirrel was nice. And, yes, it’s nice to have bird friends. But, come winter, that squirrel found himself in an empty nest. He wasn’t sleeping on food. He didn’t even have grass seeds in the nesting material beneath him. And, he was hungry and sad.

            “It was a very bad winter, and all winters are very bad, but it was a very bad winter. So bad that the sky was dark blue even in the dead of night. And, the wind wouldn’t stop blowing into the squirrel’s hungry nest. Yes, even the nest was hungry. And, it was so cold, the ground was exploding at night. The ground beneath the tree was going ‘Kabam! Kabam!’ and when the sun would rise, it would just go ‘woop!’ above the horizon and then ‘woop!’ back down, and the sad, hungry squirrel would dart out of his hungry nest and onto the ground while the sun was doing that and bite the ice until he found something he buried, or an odd little frozen shrunken root, if he was a lucky squirrel that day.

            “And, where were all of his bird friends then? They were gorging themselves on pizza crusts and discarded waffle cones, there on a sunny sidewalk in Palm Beach, Florida. The End.”

            It was a hard-scrabble existence, but those squirrels were born for it, and, as I said, born into it, which worked out well.

            But, there in Cricket Alley, Jake knew that there was a bounty just to the south, and all of the alley squirrels would raid Oak Grove in the dead of fall, when things were getting dicey. The small and furtive squirrels from Cricket Alley would gather the cold nuts, and the established, sleek inhabitants didn’t care. They would just pause, look, and ask- “Who are you?” The squirrels of Cricket Alley, and they were in groups of few, responded- “Never mind that, we’re stealing your acorns.” And, they would dart off with their chilly shiny tawny take.

            The squirrels of Oak Grove didn’t care. But the raiders darted off soon enough not to hear the ambivalent chirping, fast enough to think that the Oak Grove squirrels cared, and the acorns tasted the better for it.

            It is said that a flea can jump five times higher than an alert tail. But, Oak Grove is so far away that if a flea from Cricket Alley started hopping that way with a purpose, he would never make it. Which is good. Instead, that little pest would die. He would die in the dust, in ignominy, and stay dead, and not even be consumed by an animal or the little bugaboos in the soil, they would shun him, and good for them, they have what-you-call ‘taste’. Thus to all fleas.

            The squirrels of Cricket Alley do have something of substance that the squirrels of Oak Grove lack, and that is crickets. In the lazy summer, the squirrels of Cricket Alley munch upon the poor, bitter crickets, and theorize about how Jake arrived. Some say that the squirrels have their eye out for That Jake in Oak Grove, and about how he still stole an acorn from them last September that was as big as his head. Others say that it was a Romeo and Juliet thing, but that he didn’t have the guts to eat the hemlock. Which was good for them, since he’s everyone’s grandfather. When That Jake was around, he would just laugh at the theories. But That Jake is no more. And that was just before the big branch fell.