My husband noticed them first: a bunch of gray squirrels disporting themselves in the trees behind the neighbor's house. The leafless branches made them particularly visible as they flung themselves from limb to skinny limb. We tried to count, "Four, five... no, six..." We ended up at nine. Three or four would be chasing each other in a line, slinking rapidly along a branch and up a trunk. Without knowing a male from a female gray squirrel, we had no way of knowing what sorts of social interactions were going on, what hormones were wafting unseen through those bare trees. Was this a bachelor party? A gang? Girls' day out? A singles mixer? Or perhaps the squirrels were, like us, simply enjoying being out of their nests and active in the warmer air of this January thaw.

Nine gray squirrels in trees--
I'm overcome with an urge
to fling myself into the air.