There are a couple of large, gray squirrels capering outside the office window. I call them the suits as they seem more businesslike and formally dressed than the ground squirrels we normally see.

The suits are performing some sort of randomized concentric search algorithm, presumably for food but who really knows the mind of a suit? They could be setting traps for ground squirrels and dark-eyed juncos for all I know. One of the large trees has become their scratching post, a place to sharpen nails and work off the stress of modern squirrel life. It must be a stressful year, the bark is all but peeled off in a wide swath just above ground level. As I watch one of the suits jumps up and starts rending bark fanatically, and I swear I hear a high pitched "More nuts? MORE NUTS? I'll give you more nuts....argghhh!"

Across the river there are two short trees swarming with young suits. Their business is funny business. They go up the trunk, they go down the trunk. Up, down. Going up in a straight line, coming down in a clockwise spiral. Up, down, and around. Wait, one of them just had a great idea, off they go in single file across the frozen river. It must be nuttier on the other side.

But I have my own nuts, er, code to organize and can't study squirrels all day. I turn back to the glowing screen and the cryptic doodles. This doesn't sit well with the suits and they send an emissary to the tree top outside my window. He climbs to the edge of a thin branch, swaying dangerously, and gives me a look. It's hard to describe. Up close he looks less like a suit and more like a well insulated rodent who's been in a few scrapes.

I grab for the camera and the suit unwinds the trunk and sproings across frozen snow. No time for vanity, there's work to do. Pretty soon the ground squirrels will wake up and you can't get anything accomplished in that racket.

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