By morning it was sunny. Birds sang, squirrels nyukked it up like Stooges, butterflies flitted in that drunken way of theirs. Nature had decided to pretend "last night" never happened.

I ventured out to survey the damage. Hailstones were piled up in the shadows and dissolving in the sun, giving the ground the appearance that it was emerging from mothball storage. My cucumber plants sulked, offended by ice in July. But the Long Trailing Zucchini, resilient as starlings, seemed to have grown another foot overnight.

A haze hung in the air, accompanied by that smell you get when you put damp logs in a fireplace. I tried to follow the smoke to its source, but smoke, like journalists, can be cagey about sources. In a panic I checked on my favorite apple tree, which was probably one of the oldest in the whole valley. I'd always loved its huge lower branches that arced almost to the ground and back up again, inviting you to climb, and its wide trunk that twisted around like a gently wrung towel. Fortunately the tree had been spared, though hail had knocked a depressing number of tiny apples all over the ground. I made a mental note to pile them up on the farm stand and call them "baby apples" or something. Word is, juvenile food was all the rage with foodies; "baby beets" and "baby carrots" and "baby greens" were presumably the veal of vegetables. Maybe "baby apples" were just one PR campaign away from becoming a Thing, too.

The smoke trail eventually led me up the road to Murphy's Christmas Tree Farm. Over the years, paint had worn off its sign, leaving the mysterious " URP    IS MAS   EE  ARM," which looked like some kind of cipher. The place had been abandoned for decades. The only clue to its past was the oversized trees still lined up in formation like an army practicing maneuvers. Whatever the trees were fighting for, I hope they won.

As I approached the sign, I startled a trio of chickens who ran and flapped in three different directions as if I might be an axe murderer or something. Which, when you think about it, is not a totally unreasonable concern if you're a chicken.

The question was: Why were there chickens in the woods?

Then, to my surprise, I saw the hunting party, who had a little campsite set up in a clearing. At a cook-fire, the mother was frying eggs and sausages in a cast-iron pan. The dog was staring at the sausages, dancing from paw to paw and wagging his tail so desperately that his entire body wagged. The mother shooed him away, and he slunk off into the woods, mopey as Eeyore. The father was on a cell phone, talking rapid-fire, pacing. The kids were busy cleaning a big pile of giant mushrooms, wiping dirt and pine needles off the stalks one mushroom at a time, and placing them in large baskets. They were these spotted, pudgy, pinkish-tan things—the mushrooms, I mean—that looked like they belonged in a storybook about elves. At least a dozen baskets were arranged near a pop-up camper that was almost entirely camouflaged with pine boughs.

The mother saw me first. She was not happy to have a visitor, maybe because I hadn't called first and there was no telling how long I'd be staying. When I approached with a friendly wave, she shouted something to her family and started gathering up the cookware. I thought she said something about a "gadget."

All eyes turned to me, wide and worried. The father got off the phone and spoke urgently to the kids, and soon they were grabbing the baskets of mushrooms and carrying them to the camper. Then the father called out, "Pesha! Pesha!" and whistled at the trees like he was hailing a cab.

Apparently I'd come at a bad time. I asked where they were going in such a hurry. I asked if I could help.

The father spoke loud and fast, but I didn't know what he was saying. He sounded angry, or afraid.

Then the older girl said something to me that sounded like, "You, gadget." She shrugged, apologetic.

"What?" I said.

"You . . . tale."

"I don't understand."

"You tale . . . we har."

"Hair?"

She sighed. "He-er." She pointed at the ground.

"Ohhh. No no no." I shook my head. "I won't tell you're here." Thinking: Why would I? And who would I tell?

There was a pause in the activity as they all exchanged glances.

Both kids looked hopeful, but the parents were still wary, speaking tensely to each other. I heard the mother say that word again, while pointing a spatula at me.

"Gadget . . . ?" I asked, putting my hand on my chest questioningly.

The mother shook her head. "Gad-jay."

"Gan . . . ja?" I asked. I mimed "smoking," and crossed my eyes to show "enchantment."

The mother snorted, threw her hands in the air and muttered pretty much the way Mama always had, whenever she accused me of being touched in the head.

Just then the dog burst out of the woods carrying a very dead, soot-blackened creature that appeared to have recently been a squirrel. The kids shrieked. The dog trotted in little circles as the father scolded in a tone that needed no translation, ordering the dog to drop its prize. The dog shook his head playfully and shuffled out of reach. Maybe the dog was holding out for an even squirrel/sausage trade. And who could blame him?

Meanwhile the kids laughed and laughed, delighted as kids always were when someone besides them got into trouble. I began to laugh too, which made everyone remember I was there, and turn to stare at me again, wondering why. I'd almost forgotten why, myself.

I tried to explain about smelling the smoke. (I pinched my nose and pointed at the campfire, doing that miming thing everyone does to fill in a language gap.) But as I was explaining, I looked up and saw where the smell had really come from. It was hard to miss.

Left to their own devices for decades, Murphy's oldest spruce trees had reached Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree heights. At least, until the past night's storm, when several of the tallest trees had been struck by lightning. Their blackened tops still smoldered like ships' masts after a cannonball fight. One tree had even been split right down the center and curly-cued.

I'm not sure what motivated me to investigate further. But as I walked toward the scorched trees (the dog following after me, still clutching its squirrel, and everyone else following after the dog), I thought I heard a teeny squealing noise as if a mad scientist with a shrink ray had reduced wild pigs to the size of mice. I looked around, then up, trying to find the source of the sound.

It seemed to be coming from a nostril-shaped hole in one of the scorched trees—a tiny little distress signal broadcasting on a very high frequency, over and over, to a mama squirrel who would never again answer.

I grabbed one of the lower branches, which was sticky with sap, and began climbing. It was one of those Christmas trees with the really stiff, stabby needles, and I was stuck all over by the time I reached the hole, like Gulliver speared by Lilliputians. I peered in as if trying to spy through a keyhole, and heard tiny squeaks. I couldn't see anything in the darkness. I also couldn't fit my hand into the knothole.

By now the curious hunting party had gathered at the base of the tree. Climbing back down, I wondered how to explain the problem, but there was no need. They'd seen enough. My feet had barely touched the ground before the younger kid (who, I was 51-to-52 percent certain, was a boy) sprang into action, scrambling monkey-like up the tree in mere seconds. He squeezed his tiny hand into the knothole. Moments later, he brought his hand back out through the hole, very slowly and very carefully, as if playing Operation, and tucked something into the chest pocket of his overalls. When he came back down the tree, he reached into his pocket and proudly produced two tiny balls of fur, placing them in my hand. They were two baby flying squirrels: very young, and cold. But breathing.

I offered them back, explaining, "finders keepers." The dog barked, apparently in support of this policy. But the mother shook her head and gestured sternly, much like a baseball umpire declaring a runner "safe."

Apparently, four people, a dog, and some-odd chickens were plenty of mouths (and beaks) to feed.

Now what?

I looked at the tiny creatures. They did not look back at me; their eyes were scrunched closed. They were pitiful. You could still see the pink skin of their bellies through their velveteen fur, which was white on their underside and brownish-grayish on their topside. Their general body shape was flat as an empty finger puppet. The flaps of their "wings" were all bunched up like a hastily-folded map. Pitiful. They weren't likely to survive the night, whether I left them in the tree to let nature take its course, or took them home and fed them. So what was the point? Right?

Which led me to wonder aloud, what in the world would I even feed baby flying squirrels, anyway?

The girl said something to the mother, gesturing at the baby squirrels and then at me, in what sounded like a skeptical, vaguely judgey tone.

To my surprise, the mother spoke to me. For several minutes she went on, in sentences which seemed to have an awful lot of harsh consonants and hand gestures. When she was finished, she gave me a look of pity at my obvious lack of comprehension. Sighing, she turned to her daughter.

The girl explained to me, "She say . . . got meelk."

I suspected this was an abridged translation.

"Got milk?" I repeated, pretty sure I once saw that on a billboard, along with a black and white picture of a celebrity in their underwear. Or was I thinking of Just Do It?

The girl shook her head. "Got. Got." She curled her index fingers into two horns and put them against her forehead. "Got meelk." She demonstrated a la charades, holding one hand palm up, as if it were cradling an invisible squirrel, and with the other hand she squeezed an invisible bottle over the "squirrel." At least I think that's what she was doing.

The mother nodded and said something that sounded like "Ya. Buzz knee, buzz knee. Got."