• The claw sliced right through my stomach. I peered down at it, and everything was fuzzy, like a reversed mirror. Maybe not quite.

    There was pain, but it was life threatening. Something hard bounced off my head. I blinked, and another squirrel, a fat grey one to be exact, stood above me holding a acorn.

    I blinked up stupidly. The squirrel's name was Canuck. By a misfortune, I knew him.

    We'd become friends, a long time ago. He had his butt stuck in a small tree hole, and little brats were throwing twigs at him.

    Instant friendship happens when you headbutt a squirrel out of a tight spot.

    I squeaked and twitched my tail.

    I was sprawled on the ground, my nest of cotton and fabrics hanging from a twig above me. It had been my brilliant plan to hold a bed above the wood floor in my tree hole.

    "You stupid pinecone. You fell outta bed Knut." Canuck said, and walked away, his stomach sticking out in front with the acorn under his arm.

    Knut. Nut. It was a one word difference to mock the nut squirrels liked best. If names were berries, I'd pitch mine out of the tiny opening I had in the huge oak tree.

    I lived among only 100 squirrels. Many red and grey. I turned out brown, a rare one in the tree.

    We all lived and cooperated together, to live through the winters and be alive to find nuts in the spring.

    I hated every last one of these squirrels, apart from Canuck. They teased, poked, hurled twigs and berries at me. They also once grabbed my tail, but I had the right to bite them that time.

    To us, there was no other life. Everyday a survival of the fitest. We all lived inside the great oak tree. There were tunnels and halls inside and little rooms we were free to use.

    They were ours, and every room at the bottom of the tree was taken. Air up at the top was colder. So, of course, that was were I lived and foraged.

    I peeked out of the fair sized hole and surveyed the woods below. I spotted something very scary, almost more so then a hawk or other bird.

    Peewee, a nasty smelly Calico cat, loved to eat us. I'd personally love to give that ugly tail a good yanking and have him chauffer me anywhere I pleased.

    He'd sooner go vegan.

    Canuck was outside, plopped down on the cold ground, eating away on a couple large berries.

    He never noticed the cat meow a few feet away.

    Canuck had to have been born with out any common sense or survival instincts at all. Without thinking, I wormed through the small open window and flew, dropping like a rock.

    I landed on the cats ugly head, very happily showing him my bushy tail. If only cats didn't have claws.