Jon Evans - Beasts of New York

A long time ago, when humans still lived in cities, on a coldmorning near the end of a long, cruel winter, in magnificentCentral Park in the middle of magnificent New York City, a youngsquirrel named Patch was awakened very early by the growls of hisempty stomach.

A squirrel's home is called a drey. Patch's drey wasvery comfortable. He lived high up an old oak tree, in ahollowed-out stump of a big branch that had long ago been cut offby humans. The entrance was only just big enough for Patch tosqueeze in and out, but the drey itself was spacious, for asquirrel. Patch had lined his drey with dry leaves, grasses andbits of newspaper. It was warm and dry, and on that cold morning hewould have liked nothing better than to stay home all day andsleep.

But he was so hungry. Hunger filled him like water fills aglass. The cherry and maple trees had not yet started to bud;flowers had not yet begun to grow; the juicy grubs and bugs ofspring had not yet emerged; and it had been two days since Patchhad found a nut. Imagine how hungry you would feel if you went twowhole days without eating, and you may have some idea how Patchfelt that morning.

Patch poked his head out of the drey into the cold air andshivered as he looked around. Clumps of white, crumbly ice stillclung to the ground. Gusts of cold wind shook and rustled thetrees' bare branches. The pale and distant sun seemed drained ofheat. Patch took a moment to satisfy himself that there were nodangers nearby, no hawk circling above or unleashed dog below. Thenhe emerged from his drey and began to look for acorns.

But what marvels, what miracles, what mysteries are hiddeninside those simple words!

Squirrels are extraordinary creatures. Think first of how theyclimb. When Patch left his drey, he went up, not down. He passedthe drey of his friend and neighbour Twitch, climbed to thenorthernmost tip of his oak tree's cloud of barren branches, andcasually hopped onto the adjacent maple tree, home to his brotherTuft. To a squirrel, every tree is an apartment building, connectednot only by the grassy thoroughfares of the ground but by sky-roadsof overlapping branches. Tree trunks are like highways to them,even branches thin as twine are like walking paths, and they leapthrough the sky from one tree to another like circus acrobats.

When he reached the last of the thick grove of trees, Patchpaused a moment to look around and consult his memory. His memorywas not like yours or mine. Human memories are like messageswritten on crumbling sand, seen through warped glass. But squirrelshave memories like photograph albums; exact and perfectrecollections of individual moments. Patch, like every squirrel,had spent the past autumn burying hundreds and hundreds of nuts andacorns, each one in a different place. And he had stored all ofthose places in his memory book. The winter had been long, butPatch's memory book still contained a precious few pages thatdepicted the locations of nuts buried in the autumn, but not yetdug up and eaten. Patch climbed to a high branch, stood on his hindlegs, and looked all around, seeking an image from one of thosememories.

If you had looked at Central Park that morning with human eyes,you would have seen concrete paths, steel fences, a fewearly-morning joggers and dog walkers, all surrounded by fields ofgrass and ice and bare trees and rocks, and beyond them,Manhattan's endless rows of skyscrapers.

But with Patch's eyes, with animal eyes, he saw no parkat all. Instead he saw a city in itself. A vast and mighty citycalled the Center Kingdom. A city of trees, bushes, meadows andlakes; a city scarred by strips of barren concrete; a citysurrounded by endless towering mountains. All manner of creatureslived in this city. Squirrels in their dreys, rats and mice intheir underground warrens, raccoons in the bushes, fish and turtlesin the lakes, birds fluttering through the trees or resting intheir nests. At that hour on that day, very early on a wintermorning, the Center Kingdom was almost abandoned - but soon springwould come, and the city would bloom into a thriving maelstrom oflife and activity. All Patch needed to do, until that blessed timearrived, was find enough food for these last few days ofwinter.

He saw in the distance, near the edge of the densely wooded areahe called home, a jagged rock outcropping from his memory book. Hewas so hungry he paused only a moment to check for dangers beforeracing headfirst down the tree trunk and towards the rocks. In hismemory that same outcropping was just there - and thenearest human mountain visible over the treetops to the west wasthere - and a particular maple tree, which had beencovered in orange and scarlet leaves on the day Patch buried theacorn, had been exactly there, and that faraway.

Patch found his way to the exact spot where all those landmarksfell into place, so that the place where he stood and the page fromhis memory book matched perfectly, like a picture and its tracing.Then he began to sniff. He knew as an undeniable fact that in theautumn he had buried an acorn within a tail-length of where hestood. And squirrels can smell perfume in a hurricane, or a dog ahalf-mile upwind, or a long-buried acorn.

But Patch smelled nothing but grass, and earth, and normalair-smells.

His heart fell. It seemed to fall all the way into his paws andseep out through the tips of his claws. Patch let out a littlemurmur of awful disappointment. There was no food here. This acornwas gone, already gone.

This was not unusual. Squirrels often found and ate nuts buriedby other squirrels. But the same thing had happened with every nutPatch had tried to unearth for the last two days. And that wasunusual. It was such an astonishing run of bad luck that Patch hadnever heard of such a thing happening before.

He dug anyway, hoping that maybe this acorn had no smell, or hisnose was not working right. But he found nothing. And when he foundthe next burial place, again there was nothing. He ran to the next;and the next; until finally there were no more pictures left inPatch's book of memories, no nuts left to try to unearth. And hewas so hungry.

By this time other squirrels too had emerged from their dreysand were digging for food. Patch knew all of the half-dozensquirrels he could see around him, and the dozen more whosepresence he could smell in the cold wind. They were all of histribe.

Squirrels are social animals, they have family and friends,clans and tribes and kingdoms. Patch's tribe, the squirrels of theTreetops, were not like the Meadow tribe who lived near the city'sgrassy plains, or the Ramble tribe that inhabited its rockiestwilderness, or the red Northern tribe. The Treetops tribe was morea group of individuals than a community. If they had had a motto,it would have been, "Take care of yourself." None of the squirrelsaround Patch were of his clan. It would have been a terribly lowand shameful thing for Patch to go to one of them and ask for evena single bite of an acorn. But while pride is important, it cannotbe eaten, and hunger is more important still. Patch was so hungryhe would have begged for food.

But there was no one to beg from. For not a single one of thesquirrels around him had found a nut this morning. All of them hadbeen digging for nothing.