Not a nut

Around the corner

Half past eight on a July morning at Het Vinne. I was on the path by the northern hide, where the woods give way to the grass. The sun hadn’t reached that spot yet; everything still lay in the shade of the trees. I came around the corner and saw something in the dry grass.

A frightening moment

A red squirrel, sitting up, holding something against her chest. She stopped and looked straight at me. In her paws lay a tiny, almost hairless baby, stretched out and limp, as if it were no longer alive. But it was only a moment. A second later she was busy with it again.

Not a nut

She folded it up, tighter and tighter, until all she held was a small round ball. From a distance you would think: a nut, maybe a plum. It was neither. It was her newborn.

Stay still

In slow motion you see what my eyes missed in the moment. She bites into the little ball, very gently, again and again. The way I read it, she’s telling it: stay like that, I’m going to pick you up. And between her paws, if you look closely, you can see its tiny ears.

Gone

Then she took it in her mouth and leapt away through the grass, off to a new nest. Zoom in on that last photo and you can see its little head, curled up tight, and how carefully she holds it. From the first photo to the last, less than a minute had passed.

Only at home

I didn’t understand what I had seen until I was home, going through the footage. She was moving her young. Squirrels sometimes do that when a nest becomes unusable, because of parasites or because it gets too hot. Less than a minute, and I happened to come around the corner at exactly the right moment. Sometimes all it takes is being out there.