ILL WIND
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 of the skull, clean through, the size of a .45 caliber slug. Probably the bullet that put him down. One horn is