I'm about to tell you something really important. So important that I forgot it twice while chasing a butterfly on my way to write this. But there, I remember now. It's about the oak tree.
First off, something you should know about me: I'm eleven months old, which, by my calculations — I count in naps, I don't know how to do it any other way — is more or less my whole life so far. And in those eleven months the world hasn't stopped surprising me for a single day. Garden hoses are magic. Paper bags are a party. And until yesterday, I thought I'd seen it all. Until yesterday.
It turns out that at the edge of our yard, where Mike's lawn gives up and the real forest begins — with thick roots poking out of the ground like the tree is breathing — someone lives that nobody had really told me about. Linda would drop little hints, "the one from the oak tree," "she won't bother you if you don't bother her," but Linda says a lot of things like that, calmly, like the world had no urgency at all. I'm not like that. I need to know things NOW.
So I went to smell it. That's the first thing I always do, smell, long before I look. The nose gets everywhere before the eyes do — any self-respecting dog knows that. And the trunk of that oak smelled like a thousand years of stories I didn't know: earth, moss, something sweet and old that I now know were hidden acorns, hundreds, maybe thousands, an entire treasure right under my paws and I had no idea.
I had my snout pressed against a root, absolutely happy, when the whole world suddenly became two things at once: a rustle of leaves above, and something small, brown, and furious that came down the trunk like it was a slide.
I thought: new friend! That's always my first thought about anything that moves. Bird: new friend. Vacuum cleaner: new friend, if a bit noisy. So I did what I always do when I mean "hi, how exciting, let's play" — I lunged forward with my whole body, which is clumsier than I'd like, and even tripped over my own front paws, which sometimes don't agree with the back ones.
She did not think the same thing I did.
She stayed still on a low branch, her cheeks so puffed up it looked like she was hiding an entire meal in there — and honestly, I think she was — and she looked at me with a face that in dog language clearly means "don't even think about it." I couldn't read it in time. And then the acorn hit me. Straight between the ears, with an aim I still can't explain.
Several things happened in my head all at once, because that's how my head works, everything at once: "ow," then "wait, did she just do that?", then "wow, good aim," and almost immediately after, with my tail already wagging on its own because my tail has its own opinions and doesn't always ask me first: "I want to be her friend even more than before."
I barked, yes. But not out of anger. I barked the way I bark when something is so unbelievable it can't fit inside my body quietly.
Linda trotted over, in no hurry at all, sat down beside me with that elegance I've spent eleven months trying to copy without success, and explained to me, very patiently, that this was the squirrel of the oak tree. That the tree is hers, every branch, every acorn, and that she probably doesn't even know it herself, but every acorn she forgets in some corner of the yard turns, come spring, into a small new oak. That without meaning to, grumpy as she is, she plants forests.
That was the most beautiful thing I'd heard in my entire eleven months of life. Someone who yells "get out" and is actually giving away trees.
As we were leaving, my head still a little sore but my heart completely full, I turned to look at her one last time. She was still there, with my acorn — because I already feel like it's a little bit mine — between her paws, turning it slowly. And for one second, just one second, she stopped looking angry.
Linda says that around town they call her Nut, though nobody remembers anymore who started calling her that. I love the name. I plan to introduce myself properly tomorrow. More carefully and with fewer trips, I promise. Well, I promise I'll try.
— Max 🐾
🐾 Saturday, Linda narrates: the dock, low tide, and something Peanut found among the rocks that — according to her — "we shouldn't have touched."