Back in Black

My eyes wander sometimes. OK , they wander all the time. I can’t help it. I’m always looking for the next picture.

It sometimes makes it difficult to have a conversation, at least a long one. I have a tendency to get bored quickly and start looking out the window or across the room or anywhere but where I’m supposed to be.

This happened just the other day.

I was at the Flathead Basin Commission meeting, a quasi-governmental group charged with both protecting and researching the Flathead River Basin. The conversation was dominated by the threat of zebra and quagga mussels infesting the watershed.

Both mussels are insidious little buggers and have wreaked havoc in dozens of waterways where they super filter the water, concentrate toxins, foul shorelines and plug water intake pipes with their shells.

Infestation here would be a disaster, all agree.

So I was sitting behind the panel and their discussion was over and they turned to the “public” for comments. The “public” turned out to be me and a couple of other reporters.

I was having a conversation with the panel when my eyes began their wandering. I couldn’t help myself.

Because there was a squirrel in a tree.

Not an ordinary squirrel, mind you. A black squirrel. I have never seen a black squirrel in Montana. Back East there was a town park full of black squirrels and I’d make the hour-plus drive just to photograph them.

But since moving here some 19 years ago, I have yet to see a black squirrel.

But there one was, running up and down the tree. Well, I’m pretty sure it was a black squirrel. I mean, I saw something black going up and down. It was too small to be a marten and too big to be a chipmunk. I suppose it could have been a chipmunk, but even then, I have never seen a black chipmunk either.

At any rate, all eyes were on me and we were having this heady discussion about billions of dollars in damage these mussels could cause and all I wanted to do was blurt out, “LOOK! A BLACK SQUIRREL!”

And then, of course, race out the door, camera in hand, to get a picture.

I did not do that. I brought my eyes back in the room and tried not to smile.

I do have some self-control. Not much, but a little.

After the meeting I happened to see a maintenance man wandering the grounds.

“You ever seen a black squirrel here?” I asked.

He said he hadn’t.

I went on about how they’re called melanistic and are fairly rare and told him about the park back East.

Maybe it was just me, but I could have sworn about halfway through the conversation his eyes began to wander…

Chris Peterson is the editor and photographer for the Hungry Horse News.