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Showing posts from February, 2011

ILL WIND

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     I’ve made the squirrels happy.  One at least.  The steer skull perched on my upstairs deck is a chew toy, and the squirrel leaps onto the nailed tin rail fascia and works on the skull to sharpen his teeth.  I can hear him from downstairs fiercely gnawing the bone.        Inspecting the old steer skull, I see the evidence; chipped around the eye hole, the horn shorn clean of its whiskers next to the bone of the skull, and a chip or two of bone knocked to the deck.  He’s worked on the side facing the house where he can get purchase with his teeth and a grip on the deck rail.  The bone is worn with the look of porous coral, a pad of pumice.  Sponge-like in appearance but porcelain-hard, the bone of the skull wears the markings of the dead with a chipped patina of a rodents best work.  Sculpted by the needs of the animal kingdom.        There’s a bullet hole in the top o...