I’m sipping hot chocolate enjoying the fresh air on a May early evening up on our treehouse balcony. I am delighted it’s neither warm nor cool, it’s just Goldilocks right. There’s no kids or noise across the street. There’s no cars driving by our busy road. There’s no neighbors on either side.

I recognize the white bright light of Venus in the sky. It’s low between the sugar pine branches to the southeast of where I am lounging.

And just like that, in a snap of a second, in an instant and flash of time, something flies from behind the east side of the house and whizzes past me and smacks into the bird feeding tree trunk. It’s another flying squirrel and this time I see it glide in full flight and I think to myself this one has to be the male because this guy slams, thank you ma’am, scrabbles up and down and causes havoc.

The other beady eyed glider is still, steady, methodical in her bird feeder attack approach and technique and watches the male with I swear, a roll of her beady eyes. So I just assume inside my own judgmental brain, she’s the female.