Signs of life in unexpected places

In warmer months, the girls next door like to play under our porch. They call it the "squirrel house." There's a tiny path beside our front steps the girls can navigate without crouching, then a hidden space beneath the porch floor, full of cobwebs and rogue supermarket circulars -- but also a rarefied hideout for two kids who never lost their knack for creative play.

As someone with an irrational fear of harming people, I've always secretly worried over this. What if they can't get out one day? What if the porch collapses? (I mean jeez, look at that crack in our foundation!)

But on this unseasonably mild February morning, I braved the space myself to try to clear out some debris, and what I found was this scene: A hand-constructed table with a tiny mammalian friend in a flower pot. It's probably been there since June. I cleared out the litter but left the table set.