Broken Nest

A couple of weeks ago, Lisa walked me to the sliding glass door. "Look" she said, pointing at our vegetable garden: A squirrel, its mouth stuffed with leaves, scurried over the roof of the garden shed and slipped through a tiny hole at the top of the doors. "Shit," I said. "It's making a nest." Two days later, I shoveled some snow from in front of the doors, pulled them open, and stood looking at a globe of tightly wound leaves, string, a pair of stockings and dried grass, and poking out of the center like a tiny ball, a squirrel's head, darting left to right. "Back up, Patrick," I said, having a cartoonish vision of the squirrel jumping out and latching onto my son's face like a starfish. "It's just a squirrel," he said, not listening. I knew I had to get the squirrel out of the shed because spring was coming and I had all my garden tools in there, so I poked the nest with a shovel, but the head just dove inside. I could have walked away. Keeping the door open. The squirrel would have scattered, but I was curious. I wanted to see the squirrel again. I hooked the nest with the shovel and pulled and the squirrel shot into the air like a water-rocket. "Run," I screamed at Patrick. He walked back a few steps, watching the squirrel dart up a tree. And then, the cries. Tiny high pitched whimpers. Coming from the broken nest. "Patrick," I said. "Go inside." "Why?" he asked. "Just go inside." He listened this time and walked away. I stepped closer and looked down, pink and bare, the baby squirrel on the white snow. In the shed, there were three more. I looked at the sliding glass door, where Lisa stood with Patrick. I raised my arms. "What?" Lisa said. I couldn't speak. I just raised my hands again. The mother made noises from a branch on the white pine above me. What had I done? I mouthed the words "babies" to Lisa and then I looked back at the shed. I bent down and scooped the baby on the snow onto a piece of cardboard. I tried to place it back onto the shelf where the tangled globe once was, but its leg snagged a piece of string and it hung there above its siblings, swaying frantically. I juggled its leg loose and it fell with the others, all crying now; the mother making noises above. I did not know what to do. I covered them with the leaves that had fallen onto the snow, closed the door and walked away. Inside, I did a Google search and read that the mother may return to take the babies away if you leave the nest alone. I did, for two days, and then returned. I opened the door, feeling uneasy about what I might find. I flipped through the leaves, and the string. Nothing. The babies were gone. Thankfully taken away.