I once co-owned, with an ex-wife, a three story home that hung on the side of Lookout Mountain, in Mentone, Alabama. The house had three decks, one on each level. The deck off the master bedroom became bird feeding central. I had five hummingbird feeders on poles attached to the railing that ran around three sides of the deck. At the two western corners, I had a huge feeder that must have held a gallon of bird seed. The feeders had clear Plexiglas sides so I could monitor the seed level. I loved to sit on the deck during late summer, hummingbird season. I once counted fourteen different hummingbirds eating, and chasing each other, around the feeders.
A few months after I moved in, I thought I noticed the seed level in the large feeders going down between sunset and sunrise. I didn’t think much of it, because I knew there were no birds using the feeders after sunset. Then one night, just after I turned out my reading light, I heard a soft thud on the side of the house. I lay silent for a few minutes, and then I heard another one, higher up on the side of the house.
I slipped out of bed and moved quietly to the sliding glass door that led onto the deck. The moon was almost full, but it was hiding behind some fast moving clouds. In a few seconds the clouds swept away, and the deck was bathed in silver light. At that moment, there was another soft thud, and in seconds, I saw a small shape run along the top of the railing from the house to the feeder. I looked closely and saw that the tiny creature had joined another who was already at the feeder. I must have made a noise, because suddenly they disappeared, and they didn’t come back that night.
To make an eleven-year old story shorter, I’ll cut to the bottom line. The animals were flying squirrels (See the line drawing). They are tiny, nocturnal creatures, who live in small bands. They could more accurately be called “gliding squirrels,” since that’s what they do. They run to the top of a tall tree and leap toward their objective. The instant they jump, they spread their legs stretching a membrane between their front and real legs. The membrane then becomes a wing, a glider wing. The soft thuds I heard were the squirrels softly striking the side of the house, just above the railing. From there, they ran to the feeders and helped themselves.
Over time I realized there were two bands of them, and each band would land and eat while I sat in the center of the deck, if I didn’t startle them. The first band got to the house about an hour after dark, the second two hours after dark. I could hear them working their way up the mountain long, before they arrived, and I could hear them moving away long, after they left. In fact, now, fifteen years, later I can close my eyes and hear them again.
The second band to arrive was the larger of the two. There were probably a dozen members of that band. They were led by Zorro, nicknamed by me, because of the unusually wide and dark bands around his eyes. One night while waiting on Zorro and his band, a wicked thunderstorm sprang up over Sand Mountain, about fifteen miles north of Lookout Mountain. I watched the storm advance, moving inside only when it was clear that I was about to get drenched. The storm was fully equipped with ten thousand foot tall lightening trees, thunder that crashed and then rolled until the next clap sounded, and rain that swept across the deck in sheets that at times seemed almost horizontal. I watched the storm, marveling at the power of nature, and thinking, I won’t see Zorro tonight.
I was a second or two away from turning away from the door when the biggest lightening tree of the night flashed from the clouds and dropped to the ground, holding in place for a long moment, and in the process turning night into day. I had dropped my gaze as soon as the lightening appeared. Without intending to, I was looking at the feeder on the southern corner of the deck. That’s when I saw Zorro – inside the feeder. Somehow he had managed to crawl through the opening between the Plexiglas side and the bottom of the feeder and he was standing on top of the seeds, protected from the rain and the wind, as he stuffed handfuls of seed into his mouth. No other member of his band was with him. The wind must have been gusting to fifty miles an hours and the driving rain was marching across the mountain in sheets. In spite of that, Zorro had traveled to the house, and, as far as I know, on to his other scheduled stops later that evening. A flying squirrel weighs 2 to 4 ounces – you wouldn’t think one would be a match for a vicious southern thunderstorm, but Zorro was.
**********
Yesterday, I read J.A. Konrath’s blog. Joe is an indie writer, who has made $100,000.00 in royalty in the past three weeks. After I read the blog, I went through Joe’s archives and found one of his first posts, dated, December 29, 2005.
It was Joe’s mantra for 2006. There were six points. The first one was:
1. It is inevitable, if I keep trying, that I'll succeed. A professional is an amateur who didn’t quit. Success is simply learning from failure.
When I read that, I thought of Zorro, alone, in a wild storm, coming up the side of Lookout Mountain, and then I thought of him, out of the storm, dry, and warm, inside the feeder. And then I thought of J.A. Konrath, who had no guarantee that reaching his goal was possible, yet never turning it loose.
**********
If you are serious about the writing business, if you want to enjoy the success that Joe Konrath has achieved, take a moment and read all six of his points and make them yours.
