only_hope raze i've known shooter for the better part of three years now. i could live long enough to know a million squirrels and never meet another quite like him. he must have fought wars before he found me. the respect he commands from his peers is otherworldly. there are alpha squirrels, and then there's shooter. try to best him in battle and he'll treat you as little more than a burr in his fur. creep up behind him while he eats and one effortless, efficient pivot will send you flying before you have any idea what's happening. i once watched him leap into the air and send himself spinning sideways to break up a fight between two young hotheads. some squirrels will chase anyone they think they outrank to assert their dominance. all shooter has to do is turn his head and everyone clears the path. and yet he's always so gentle with me. he likes to straighten his spine and lay the soft pad of one paw on top of mine to be fed. sometimes i'll see him every day for a month or more. sometimes i won't see him at all for weeks. but i always know he'll be back. he's survived countless injuries and the loss of his tail. i was sure the upper respiratory infection he came down with over the winter would kill him. i could hear how hard it was for him to breathe. he cut his nose open with his claws to get more air and went on wheezing until his immune system did its duty. now i can't even see the scar he made. last week he showed up nursing a new ailment. something was wrong with one of his feet. it kept getting worse until a sprain became a break. he adapted like he always has, rolling onto his back at will to lessen the distance between where he was and where he wanted to be. limping his way through this hard life. today i found him on a patch of grass beside the house, paralyzed from the waist down. impossible to say if he fell from a tree or was crushed by a car. without the use of his hindlimbs, he dragged himself forward with the hands that still worked. i don't know how he made it across the street to get to me. he took food from my fingers. he insisted on trying to stand, hopeless as it was. he drank water from a shallow dish. when his stomach was sated, he climbed into a dense knot of foliage bordering the fence that serves as an entrance to the back yard he knows so well. he made himself a bed between two broken patio stones. shade and shelter from potential predators. he sank onto his stomach. and that's where he's been for the last five hours. i've told him all the things he already knows: that i love him. that he's one of the best friends i've ever had. that there will never be another soul whirling through this world that's anything like his. i keep checking on him and petting him and talking to him. i don't know if he came here to rest or to die. he doesn't appear to be in any pain. i wish i could ask him if there's anything i can do to make him as comfortable as he can be for however long he has left. maybe knowing i'm here to see him through is enough. i can only hope. 250629 what's it to you? who go blather from