My friend was dropping me off at my house and as I prepared to exit her car, I noticed movement on the power line above us. I pointed to the line and said to Paula Nicewanger, “Look: That’s a squirrel highway.”
The squirrels of Irvington are always busy travelers on the wires above the streets. There is a power line pole in the side yard of the space that I rent, and when I interrupt the squirrels in their pillaging of my tomatoes and snap-peas, they scramble to the pole, ascend a few feet, and pause to look at me. If they decide that I might be a continuing danger, they climb to the top of the pole, stop to chatter at me, and take off on the highway.
When I am awaiting a bus at the corner of E. 10th Street and Euclid Drive, I often see squirrels working their way from South to North across 10th Street via the wire stretched from one pole to another. I wondered if the squirrels had previously seen their friends and neighbors getting squashed on the street by speeding automobiles and had looked skyward for help. When I am on that piece of E. 10th Street, I rarely see squirrels crossing the street on the ground; they are always on the high wire. At home once more (thanks, James Wright,) I watch the squirrels as they traverse the wires of the “Above-Ground Highway.” They will sometimes pause above and send chuckles down to me.
In Spring and Summer, I see Rock Pigeons lined up on the wires above the streets, but I cannot remember having seen those birds in any of the trees that populate the neighborhood I live in. Do the pigeons live on the wires? On a Spring day in 2025, when I was walking hand in hand home from Ellenberger Park with my youngest granddaughter, Myah pulled me to a stop. She quietly pointed between the houses to show me a line of Rock Pigeons huddled on a wire. I watch birds, and Myah does also, so when she pointed out the pigeons, I stood quietly with her, glad that she might have seen the beauty of those birds on a wire. When I got home, I wondered if the squirrels might have had some arguments with the pigeons about which species should be on those wires. I always see squirrels traversing the wires, but the pigeons just squat on them. Are the pigeons blocking the passage of the squirrels? Do the pigeons charge a toll for the passage of the squirrels?
Squirrels are wily rodents who probably welcomed Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” as he strung the wire that they would co-opt for their highway in the air. They probably “high-foured” each other (squirrels have four digits on their front paws) as they watched the human string the line that they would soon co-opt for their travels. “Take that, snakes! Uh, oh: Hi, hawks…” Each new mode of travel comes with new challenges. But as for the lines in the air above the squirrel-squashing streets, the big red rats — uh, squirrels — have adopted the wires that humans string, not for the transmission of electricity or words, but for their own mode of safe passage.
My characterization of the line above us a “squirrel highway” amused my friend, and just before she pulled away, Paula noted that the squirrel, which had been travelling East on the wire, had turned South. She chuckled and said that the squirrel had just taken the exit from “Highway 70 to Highway 65.”
Safe travels.
cjon3acd@att.net