I saw a squirrel yesterday up on a little cliff. I was walking on a crumbled rock path below him, and he was skittering along the ledge keeping pace, far enough out of reach not to be worried.

He was a mountain squirrel, lean, bare rock grey, and with ears much bigger than city squirrels'.

He never turned to face me, never really even let his attention drift from his work (foraging, I assume), but just as the path and the ledge were about to diverge, he stopped, flicked his tail, took a quick look down at me out of the corner of his eye, and kicked a few pebbles off the cliff.

As they rattled down onto the path just behind me, I wondered if he was trying to tell me something. If he was, it was probably something like this:

You humans think you're the only ones paying attention. You're not. But you are the only ones that think you're the only ones paying attention.