Around this time, in May 2020, we watched Mark Rober’s video “Backyard Squirrel Maze 1.0 -Ninja Warrior Course” on YouTube. N oah was far from the only person taking solace in squirrels during the pandemic. Spending $60 on a small house that may or may not get used by squirrels seemed frivolous to me, but in the middle of the pandemic, any kind of distraction also felt worth it. I’m a single mother living in the Long Island suburbs, while Noah is a single man in his 40s in Brooklyn. When Noah first showed it to me while lying in bed one afternoon, I didn’t pay much attention. ![]() The squirrel house is made of cedar and has a hunter-green composite roof. They will knock and stare if we are sleeping, or reading, or having sex. They stand on their hind legs like tiny Peeping Toms and stare at us in bed until food appears. If no almonds are waiting for them on the sill, the squirrels will knock loudly on the window until he wakes up. For a few hours each morning, they pad back and forth across the windowsill, balancing on the black steel ribbons of the landing, waiting for him to put out breakfast, then second breakfast, then snack. The squirrels live in the saw-whet owl nesting house he bought and placed on the corner of his fire escape. ![]() He will stumble to the kitchen, grab a handful of unsalted almonds from a jar in the cabinet, return to the bedroom, and crack the window an inch, popping the almonds out one by one so they land on the sill in a line. ![]() And Noah will rise from the bed as if responding to a baby monitor. But like clockwork on the weekend mornings we spend together, the squirrels will start to tap on the window. I don’t know if he does it this way when I am not here.
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