It has snowed four times this fall already and I'm starting to think that, this year, trees are idiots. Usually at the first snow, trees will dump their leaves because they know if they don't, their boughs will bow down uncomfortable with the weight of snow and soaking leaves, pulling the trunk into an awkward slouchy hunch, and eventually breaking, leaving the tree ever closer to death. Right? If all of that was bound to happen to you if you didn't let go of your leaves... wouldn't you just let go of the damn leaves?

Not this year. Every time it snows, the trees are like, "Well it's only September/October, so my eyes (feeling sensors) must be deceiving me. I must be hallucinating. Therefore I shall keep all my leaves! And maybe turn them red, but definitely not let them fall!"

The most recent snow, the one that hasn't really stopped yet as of right now, has dumped at least a foot of snow. The trees all look like gnarled old men, hanging onto their leaves stubbornly with old withered fingers. They dangle their branches mere feet from the sidewalk, sodden and pendulous. Anyone over 4 feet tall has to walk in the street or else become ensnared in vindictive tangles.

As the trees get dumber, squirrels get smarter. Any squirrel who's still alive must be. I was walking home from the grocery store with branches grabbing my hair and wrapping themselves around my backpack, and I saw a little rise in the snow with a big tunnel in it. I stopped to look down into the tunnel, and saw that at the bottom was (or had once been) a topless pumpkin. A squirrel was curled up in the bottom of the pumpkin, fat and sleeping. He had clearly been eating his nice warm home.