Fleas Navidad

From Alfred’s journal

Switch came by the feeder on the twenty-third with snow on his back and spent the better part of an hour scratching behind one ear, which is a thing squirrels do in December same as July. I used to think winter was clean. Years of believing the cold took care of the small pests for us, and then I watched a chickadee preen out something live in weather that froze the birdbath solid. Fleas Navidad, I wrote, and Switch stopped scratching long enough to hold the page, which was decent of him given the circumstances. The lights went up on the house across the fence that evening, red and green on the snow, and the whole yard looked scrubbed and holy and was not.