Baywatch was an orphaned squirrel. He was born in the Spring of 2020 in an unusually quiet yard. He had one brother and one sister, as pink as cooked shrimps in their nest high up in the trees.
Squirrels can’t read human language, but they can certainly recognize distinct sounds. Baywatch’s siblings had family names - Baerry and Blossom - but “Baywatch” came from some human sounds that the squirrel mother overheard and found pleasing.
That first summer was the best of their lives. The three young squirrels and their parents ate from the bounty of the warm forest, frolicked up and down the tall, tall trees, and jumped around the canopy of branches like acrobats.
Blossom found a mate and moved across the creek with the East Side troupe. Baerry lost an ear in a tussle with another young male. Some squirrels chattered about Baerry becoming a thug, a rumor he didn’t discourage since the truth was that he’d overindulged in a redcap mushroom and fought a friend of his who appeared to his addled peanut brain to be the size of a bear cub.
Only Baywatch still lived at home the day his parents died. His father was running across the road, remembered that he’d forgotten his good wife’s foraging list at home, and turned back to retrieve it, only to be demolished by a passing car. Mercifully, he died on impact, but unmercifully, his good wife saw the whole thing.
There lay her slain husband in a pose my publisher will not allow me to describe. Distraught, Baywatch’s mother scampered to his fallen side, tears rolling off her soft cheeks as she collected the customary tuft from her late husband’s tail to be used for the mourning ceremony. It was high noon, and the sun was extremely hot. Goodwife squirrel was no fool, even in her grief. She knew the times of day that squirrels need cover from predators, and the heat of the day held a kind of protection since all animals needed to shelter themselves in shadow to avoid dehydration.
A passing raptor - not local, but perhaps drawn by the scent of blood and heated flesh - swooped down upon the so recently widowed squirrel, and spit her bones on a mountaintop several kilometers to the south.
Now Baywatch was alone. He was alone for a long time. He repaired his family home each season with leaf patches, and he regimented six hours per day to gathering and storing food. Rather than compete with his own kind over magnolia buds or tree fungus, he preferred to scavenge on river banks. Snakes didn’t scare him, and his only competition for crayfish husks were turtles, who are faster than humans think, but no match for a squirrel.
In his river ramblings, Baywatch sometimes found scraps left by humans. Once, he was attacked by ants over a Hostess cake and in desperation he tumbled into the water and held himself under until the ants stopped biting. When he finally dragged himself out, the cake was ant-free so he took it. He also picked the drowned ants from his fur and ate them, spicy and crunchy.
Life went on like this for some time, routine punctuated by innovation. Most woodland animals spend all their energy surviving by instinct, avoiding contact with other species. Not out of spite or even fear, but simply because life in the semi-urban forest is difficult and dangerous and there is resistance enough on the path of tradition.
Baywatch began to feel his isolation in his middle age. Squirrels aren't picky mates, but Baywatch was so preoccupied with upkeep on his nest and food gathering and storage that all the females had already paired up by the time he'd make it to the mingling conventions.
In 2022, the tree Baywatch lived in died. At first, nothing changed except that the tree no longer produced leaves. More woodpeckers stopped by to feast on the insects that worked away on the decomposing wood from the inside.
That fall, two young squirrels moved into the hollows of the tree lower on the trunk. It was their first season apart from their parents. From the outside, the tree had three portholes spaced evenly apart like a short flute. The inside of the tree was not completely hollow yet, but there was space to move between the compartments so that a squirrel could enter through the lowest window and pop out the top window.
The young brothers, Nut and Bolt, utilized this feature extensively, but since they were downtrunk rather than uptrunk neighbors, Baywatch didn't mind. He exchanged neighborly chatter with them and even showed them a discarded couch cushion he'd found, since it held more cotton stuffing than he could possible use for his own nest. He stuffed a little extra in his ears when the brothers got sauced on spoiled blackberries and threw black walnut husks on the heads of passing deer late at night.
Then came a late season hurricane. It was deceptively undramatic. Rain was steady but not torrential for three days. Yellow leaves twirled to the forest floor like drifts of butterflies. Everything green hung its head, heavy, and heavier with moisture. Baywatch invited Nut and Bolt to stay in his nest, which wasn't watertight but was at least better insulated than the gaping flute apartments. The three squirrels hunkered down, eyes shut, ears folded, mute. Wind pressed through the forest like a wave swallowing the shoreline. Branches groaned and let themselves sway with the current. Inside his dreams, Baywatch felt as if he were falling.
Baywatch was falling. The tree was toppling over, its roots dried up and its trunk saturated and compromised. The nest hugged the three squirrels tight in their crashing descent, and thank Ratatöskr they landed nest-side up instead of trapped beneath the log. The landing nearly bounced them senseless, but they emerged into the cold, wet dark to hear a most wrenching cry. The fallen tree had trapped the hind quarters of a fawn.
Stunned by his own misfortune but in near disbelief of the mangled fawn, Baywatch made his way toward the poor creature's head. How could this have happened? Perhaps the roar of the wind had distracted the deer from the sound of greater danger. Perhaps it was too young-- oh, what did it matter the reason? She was a female, no button knobs between her sodden ears. Her face was petite, she was panting with pain.
"You poor deer," Baywatch murmured, reaching out a paw in comfort. He was conscious of his claws and did not want to scratch her. She started away from him, a move that caused her to cry out again. "There, there," Baywatch shouted, for murmuring simply couldn't be heard over the squall. Squirrel and deer don't speak the same language, but there was a tonal similarity to their local dialects that wasn't useless.
Suddenly, Baywatch ran back to the nest, now in disarray, and rallied his bedraggled guests. They complained bitterly, but together they gnawed a ring through the wood on either side of the trapped fawn. It was a tremendous feat, despite the head start of the center being hollowed out. They had to take frequent breaks to cram their bodies beneath the fawn's to stabilize their core temperature.
Over time, the fawn stopped her crying, sometimes because she lost consciousness. At other times, she laughed and cursed them, but Baywatch knew it was delirium speaking. He'd send Bolt, who was curiously gentle and articulate with language, to talk soothingly in the deer's ear. She never resisted them sheltering under her belly (they dug little cavities like children at the beach) and their small bodies brought her warmth, too.
Dawn brought a lighter shade of grey to the sky. All four animals were weak with exhaustion. But Baywatch dragged a bouquet of grasses to the deer's mouth and poked her until she ate. The storm had passed. A human saw the trapped deer and lifted the section of log the squirrels had separated. The human covered the deer in a blanket and before long, more humans came and took the deer away. She was too weak to protest. Nut started to scream at the humans from up a nearby tree, but Baywatch held him back. There was no time to lose, they needed to find a new home.
That winter, Baywatch had to take shorter but more frequent trips to find food. The night and day of the fallen tree had weakened his immunity and stamina. He'd relocated from the yard where he'd grown up, too many bad memories. But one shiny afternoon, the crystalline cold forming stars on his winter coat, he found himself back there, burrowing beneath the deck of the human's house for any caches of food he may have forgotten.
Through the stick forest, he saw a deer staring at him. She was grown, no more spots on her coat. But as she tread softly nearer to him, she limped. Baywatch stopped his digging and watched her. It could be her. She bent her head down, so close that he could have reached out and touched her tender nostrils. He felt warm from her soft breath. Then she slowly turned and hobbled away.
The End
*Drawing is of Baywatch’s French ancestor by Romain Simon in 1950 in the book Chante pinson. Baywatch is an Eastern Grey Squirrel and can’t afford a portrait.