Have you had your furnace checked? Added caulking around your doors? Worried about an appetite that won't wait for supper? Then you're right in tune with the natural world. All around us, the creatures are experiencing the equivalent of those same urges.

A skunk in the early morning garden was so fat, it was like a black-and-white ball. The squirrels are high in the hickory trees, gnawing through the green unripe shells to expose the meat beneath before they become inaccessible. The outside cats have nearly doubled their intake of canned food, and no longer skip meals when they are having fun.

Though I haven't gone looking for them, I'm sure the mammals have begun their winter-nest search. It's hard to watch mammals; they are mostly nocturnal, and they no longer trust any human. Little creatures, insects and spiders especially, are easier. The sycamore tussock moth larvae have dropped out of the trees and are making fuzzy cocoons out of their discarded hairs. They will lie under the considerable layer of leaves of those trees until spring.

And last night, I was awakened at midnight by the house-cat, doing a mouse-hunt in my bedroom. Never mind that there hasn't been a mouse in this house since her arrival more than 10 years ago: she'd seen something, and we both hunted until I found it. But there was no mouse. She was a wolf-spider nearly as large, bearing an egg-case as large as her own body.

I'm not very squeamish about animals, but I know that all spiders are to some degree poisonous, and this one was large enough to produce a painful bite. Luckily, I had a friend, years ago, who refused to kill anything unless it was a case of "it or me". Ruth knew how to pick up a spider without either of them getting hurt. So, like Ruth, I picked up a hand-towel and held it so the trailing edge just touched the spider.

The poor creature immediately seized the cloth and hid herself in its folds. Thus made transportable, it was easy enough to hang it on the bush nearest the door -- and outside. This morning, the towel was empty, the spider well-gone. When I looked up the spider, I found that she is, indeed, harmless to humans, and though called "rabid-wolf spider," the name reflects her appearance, not her disposition. Her true name is Lycosa rabida, but you may just think of her as a mother.

The beautiful little tree frogs are still singing in the trees along the marsh, but some have turned up around the potted plants near the house, too. It is fun, during the winter, to lift a clay pot out of its plastic container and find a few hibernating frogs clinging to the damp pot.

In central Oklahoma, it is seldom cold enough for long enough for mammals to hibernate. I can wish that squirrels did! The encyclopedia lists "nuts, seeds, acorns, flower bulbs, baby birds and eggs, adult birds, insects, food scraps, rabbits, mice, each other, mushrooms, seedlings, berries and bark" as their diet. In other words, they are arboreal rats. The difference we notice is that they are diurnal; awake and active in the daytime.

Any respectable rat would be dozing in a brush pile or under the house while I am out filling the bird feeders on a chilly day. Not the squirrel! He's the first visitor to the feeders in the morning and barely gets out of the way at dusk before the raccoons come on-shift. Their favorite sport is chasing. They chase each other, arriving cardinals and goldfinches, but what they seem to enjoy most is being chased. Any attempt on my part to relieve the feeders long enough to feed a bird results in the arrival of the entire squirrel football squad to join the game.

I did learn one encouraging fact about squirrels: they rarely carry rabies. So if I ever get my hands on one, I won't have to have shots. As if! I'd as soon pick up a raccoon, but I can't catch them, either. So, for the coming season, I'll try to leave less seed in the feeders at any one time. Maybe not setting so easy a table for them will encourage more gathering of acorns. And, after Halloween, all the leftover pumpkins will go into a brush pile so they can eat in peace.

Wild creatures have less and less natural habitat now that people take up almost all the livable land. Somehow, we must learn to live and let live with them if we don't want to live in an impoverished world full of only rats, raccoons and us. And when it came to that, I suspect that the next step would be only rats and raccoons.