It's dark on these pseudo-winter days when the rain keeps falling and the clouds linger thick, and one storm trails another, until the sky looks up at me through the grass that grows like iris amidst the broad puddles, and the ring of a hiking boot on tarmac has faded into the silence of sodden leaves and pine needles and mud.



The wind is hassling in from the west, freeing dead leaves from the beechwood's boughs, occasionally blowing the sky shockingly clear, only for clouds to follow again.



Like me, the wild animals are waiting for the weather to ease; also like me, they have to continue with their lives in the meantime and simply manage as best they might.



But I saw something...something like a smudge of clean chalk against the unbroken blackboard



Maybe the albino is more of an equal now; albinism is associated with poor eyesight, but no animal which relies on its eyes has an easy time in such days. It was with three or four "normal" grey squirrels, scrabbling around in the wet mishmash of mud and grass and leaves.



It is glaringly visible now, but come the snow...



The clouds are changing again