There's a black squirrel outside on my balcony fence and he looks like he's making love to the fence.

I kid you not. His groin is pressed into the edge of the wood. Good gravy, that little fellah is humping my fence! It's squirrel wood on fence wood. The horror. The humanity.

I feel kind of dirty watching this. Maybe I should close the shade to give the little fellah some privacy. Maybe he's just marking his territory.

Or maybe he's got an itch. He may not necessarily be romantically entangled with my fence; I could just be reading the little fellah all wrong.

But wow, look at him go. Humping like an epileptic bunny. Man, he could start a fire if he doesn't slow down. Must be one hell of an itch.

It looks like black squirrels are pretty common out here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I remember seeing my first black squirrel in Washington Square Park, New York City. They had appeared in the park a few years earlier, among the common gray squirrels. The local university newspaper reported them as freak mutant squirrels that were the result of pollution.

Out here, I think I've spotted more black squirrels than gray ones. So either there's a pollution mutation problem here too, or some of New York's black squirrels decided to move to the West Coast like I did.

And now that they're out here, they're real horny.

Okay, the little fellah finally scurried away. Guess his itch is satisfied. Or maybe he just started feeling self-conscious with me watching.

Sorry little fellah! Next time I'll give you a little more privacy. Really. I promise I won't watch—I'll just write about you again, so that millions of online strangers can read about your romance with my fence. But at least I won't watch!

. . .

Have you ever seen squirrels get it on?