The war with the squirrels has taken a new turn. I am feeding them, but there is, of course, a catch. The feeder has three arms like the sails of a windmill, and the corn is attached to the end of each arm. The squirrels become the Flying Sciuridaes (which is the family squirrel. I looked it up). I watched a squirrel spinning this morning. I couldn’t stop laughing at the beastie’s antics. He was, of course, as all squirrels are, quite persistent. He finally decided to eat upside down.

The day is cloudy again. They keep promising sun, but that hasn’t happened yet. At least it’s dry. My yard is strewn with limbs which have fallen this winter. Scrub pine branches are delicate things.

My sister is planning an Easter egg hunt for her grandson. She’ll be hiding colorful plastic eggs filled with small toys and candy in her backyard. It reminds me of one special Easter egg hunt when I was kid. It was for the whole neighborhood and was in the field behind our houses, the same field where we hunted grasshoppers and fireflies all summer. The old tree with the fallen limb was the furthest we needed to hunt. We all grabbed our pails or baskets and ran as fast as we could. We figured fleet of foot was the deciding advantage. Each find was announced by a kid holding up an egg and yelling, “I got one.” That spurred the rest of us. I filled my basket. One of the eggs I’d found was gold, and it turned out to be the grand egg, the prize egg. I don’t remember what I won. I just remember that special egg.

I remember one other hunt. It was inside the house. In those days we hunted hard boiled eggs we’d colored on Saturday. My parents would hide the eggs early in the morning and we’d hunt right after breakfast. One year my parents must have lost count. It took a while to find the source of the smell.