Squirrels Do It, Why Can't We?

Drey: a 12 inch domed ball of twigs and leaves, built on a twig platform in the fork of a tree branch. The dome is packed with leaves, moss, and bark and limed with feathers, thistledown, or dried grasses. A drey is a squirrel's nest.

I spent the evening in a drey. Well, sort of a drey. Actually a debris hut. But the materials were similar: leaves, grasses, twigs, sticks. Except my hut was built on the ground and not in a tree. I hear a lot of talk about getting "close to the earth" these days, but this was the closest I've been in a long time.

Alone, in the Missouri climax forest, I built my overnight shelter with only downed tree and leaf materials. Unlike a squirrel warren high in the trees, I soon found I was no longer alone. My habitat "woke up" the community under/above/around me. A combination of two feet of leaf insulation and my body heat changed the November woods into a summer oasis.

As I snuggled into my nest I could hear the faint clicks of boring beetles gnawing away in some of the old limbs, and feel the occasional bit of sawdust in the face as they spewed out their bore material overhead. Every hour or so I heard and felt small bodies crawling underneath my leaf bed. Mice. Voles. The spiders showed up to the party as well. Hundreds of pea-sized delicate tan spiders graced me with their spindly-legged soft abdomen presence.

Then the real gang showed up. They're the reason squirrels build their dreys high in the trees. There must have been twenty or more coyotes from the sound of their cries. I had intruded on their grounds. Coyotes are pretty curious even though they rarely get too close. Here was a smelly human in a big den, on the ground, at an unlikely location in their forest. Solitary, smelly, quiet, suspicious. At first they were three groups of coyotes about a half mile away. Then they moved in as far as their caution would allow. At about a hundred yards, the packs converged and started to sing. I understood their song. They were singing:

"You got mice in there,
And beetles in your hair,
Spiders in your underwear,
You aren't supposed to be there."

I was not about to call back and drive them away. This was just too interesting. After the calls subsided it took about an hour before they sent a scout to check me out. He made one pass around the den, rather quickly, about ten feet away. He stopped and sniffed at my breath coming out of the door-hole, turned and trotted back to the gang. Then, sounds of quiet little growls and whines, patter of paws, and away they went. Too smelly. Too scary. The mice in there are just not worth the risk, I'm sure I heard one of them say.

By dawn, my warren had dried out from body heat. What started the evening before as a musty, earthy pile of 35 degree rotten debris became a sweet-smelling, crisp and cozy room-temperature home. I'm certain if I could live in that shelter for a week the smell would grow even more complex. But then, my coyote buddies would never come back for a visit.

Next time: Survivalist romantic getaway - a drey built for two! Yep, just like they do on the Discovery Channel.