This morning, my usual Sunday sit-on-the-porch-with-tea erupted into a creaturely moment of predator and prey, split-second decisions of the animal kind.

Generally, the birds at the feeders and the chipmunks and occasional squirrel regard me as potential but not immediate threat. When I get up from my chair, they go into alert mode–the bolder ones stay, the more timid fly or scurry off but return rapidly. They seem to consider me more nuisance than threat; but they do not trust me, either. That suits all of us. I watch them, they half-watch me. I drink my tea, they eat the seeds we put out for them.

Our cats watch eagerly, in predatory stances, from behind a latched screen door. Thwarted, but fascinated. They were not the cause of today’s alarm.

The feeders have been swarmed for two weeks by legions of adolescent birds as well as adults preparing for migration or just plumping up before the frosts arrive. We’ve hosted flocks of starlings and dozens of finches of several kinds, nuthatches and sparrows and little brown songbirds, wrens, mourning doves, one remaining chipmunk from this summer’s litter, and the occasional bold squirrel–usually gray ones, though I have seen the little red ones once or twice.

At 8 am, I was enjoying a cool morning with my hot cuppa when the day burst into feathers, screams, and the scrabble of claws. A hawk swooped from the magnolia, aiming at a squirrel crouched on the patio under the birdfeeder. Something must have interrupted the hawk’s perception, however–it missed the squirrel, rotated fluidly in mid-air, and somersaulted onto the iron stand of the feeder, sending small birds into a flurry of down and shrieking in all directions.

A large buddleia bush obscured my view of the raptor, so I could not make out whether it was a young redtail (it was on the small side) or perhaps a Coopers or sharp-shinned. The squirrel’s response intrigued me. In a fraction of a second, it determined that running straight toward me was ever so much wiser than running the opposite direction (braving the open lawn to make for the treeline). I watched, amused, as the squirrel scurried along the porch to within a foot of my chair, where it suddenly scrabbled its legs, slewed sideways, and stared up at me in confused terror. Poor thing.

It climbed down the side of the porch and huddled in the bushes as the hawk shook itself and made for the oak tree and the small birds returned to their interrupted repast. The cats gazed out with renewed interest, having felt a bit flustered themselves, I could tell.

I don’t blame them. Everything lately seems so unprecedented and apocalyptic.

I feel simpatico with the squirrel.