I fed the crows a couple days ago.

There were three of them, bold and black as coffee, and I’d left a handful of peanuts on the back patio roof. Never thanked me, of course. That’s not what wild things do. But they left the peanut shells in a little crescent near the rose bush, like a calling card—or a question mark.

This morning, I took to the tub. It’s a ritual now: the heat, the quiet, the iPad balanced on a towel.

And then came the chittering. Sharp, urgent. Squirrel talk. It’s not an altogether pleasant sound, especially first thing.

I heard it again, turned. And there he was. On the tin roof’s edge, ten feet from my back. Chittering not at the fence, not at the trees, but at me. He looked me in the eye.

There’s an edge to that kind of gaze, when a wild thing doesn’t look through you but at you. I thought of rabies, of course. This is L.A., and I’ve seen raccoons with with junkie eyes.

I tapped my Gatorade bottle on the tub, a percussion warning. The squirrel turned and vanished as if on cue.

But I sit with that moment. Had he seen me feed the crows? Had he snuck a peanut and come back to barter, or beg, or accuse? Should I come full-handed?

There’s no knowing. Only that the wild has its own memory, and maybe its own economy. I hope I can contribute to it.

I wonder if that works in both directions—if the squirrel’s eyes were his version of a poem, reminding me that no gesture in the natural world goes entirely unseen.