Autumn makes her mark. The leaves turn, and the breeze blows the golden ones off the quaking aspen outside my window.
Do you ever come up with a great story title? But no story to go along with it, yet you know a story’s lurking beneath the title? Or is this only me?
For the last three years the fall season has popped a title into my head. A title for a short with no story attached to it yet. I like this title for some reason. Hopefully its story will come to me one of these years.
The title? “The Season of Dead Squirrels”.
Might come off macabre, but it’s not meant to be. It feels sad to me, a little poignant. Melancholy. I don’t know what it is about the helter-skelter squirrels at this time of year, gathering and hiding their nuts and not taking care with traffic.
I picture a woman in a tidy little mid-century ranch in the hilly neighborhood three minutes east of me. It’s an autumnal story, literally and metaphorically. That’s all I know so far.
A simple day today. Here are a couple more images.
The adjacent property. Sometimes I forget that I live within the Portland city limits.
Wanna guess which of my pets is the alpha?