Squirrels, birds don't know any better, but the end is near

Sitting in the back yard. Warm as noon in heaven; the sun pours through the trees like syrup. A white squirrel skitters over, sits up, and looks at me: He has a cheekful of nuts. Cute. It's like he was selling acorns to fundraise for his troop. Had to tell him we'd already bought, though.

You think a white squirrel is an albino, but maybe he's just clean. Maybe all the other squirrels are just dirty. This guy has learned to rinse and repeat. In ancient cultures the albino squirrel was probably seen as a sign; something so blindingly white was a portent that winter would come soon, or you would be attending a Pat Boone concert. The squirrel was occupied with the usual squirrel tasks: burying things he would immediately forget. Unless squirrels have GPS, they cannot possibly find them again. Or do squirrels just dig up someone else's acorns, and all the squirrels are somehow involved in an unconscious communal activity? They say a million monkeys typing forever might eventually produce Shakespeare; apparently a hundred thousand squirrels invent Social Security.

As the creatures on the ground prepare for winter, so do the fowl above. Last week I heard the first flock pass overhead -- the raw honks either a song of joy and farewell, or the avian version of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." But that's ascribing human behavior to animals, isn't it; we're hearing the simple inevitable product of evolution. The lead goose doesn't stand one day and say, "Tis the appointed hour, my friends; let us quit this barren field and plow the furrow of the sky." No. The sun hits a certain angle, the DNA trips the get-up-and-go instinct, and it's off to the great warm yonder. It means nothing to them, but much to us: We look up and see a ragged flag of retreat; we hear the brash bray that urges the other birds on, and the heart fills with the sadness of autumn's end.

And then the neighbor, who's moving to Arizona for five months, drives past on his way to the airport and honks his horn. That's not evolution. That's just mean.