Squirrels and I are simpatico. Sensing the sudden onset of winter, we both nut up.

On a neighborhood walk, I spotted six grays dashing helter-skelter in search of the almighty walnut. Frantic even in ordinary times, these guys were in overdrive.

Nature throws a lavish buffet every October for nut eaters. Oaks and the walnuts, black and English, dump their bounty.

In human terms, it must be like waking up to find hundreds of little filet mignons hanging in your backyard, free for the taking.

It’s impressive to watch these bushy-tailed creatures forage. They are rodents with a mission.

Extrapolating from the small size of the squirrel noggin, I imagine the squirrel brain is maybe the size of a chickpea, perhaps smaller. Yet there is seemingly nothing about the walnut, its storage and the changing seasons that these critters don’t know.

Even more impressive is their intensity. They harvest with an urgency rarely known to humans whose homes are not on fire.

Again, all this behavior from a brain no larger than a chickpea. How do they do it?

I’m guessing it’s an ingrained behavior, not something their mothers taught them. In DNA terms, how does that work? Does anyone understand this?

When you see a frisky dog bouncing up and down, wanting to play a game of fetch, it brings out your own inner puppy. Suddenly you want to fling a ball, throw a stick, maybe roll on the grass.

Manic squirrels have a similar energizing effect on me. After observing the local crew in action, I spent last weekend cleaning gutters, nailing down flashing, stacking firewood under cover.

Faster, faster, I told myself. The rains are coming. Work like a squirrel.

When my home chores were done, I was still pumped with emotion. Seeing perfect English walnuts lying by the roadside, I grabbed a fistful, then another.

When autumn’s nip is in the air and rain’s coming, walnuts become the new coin of the realm. Who gave squirrels exclusive harvesting rights,  anyway? In the dead of winter, I might need emergency food stores, too.

With the weather lurching from perfect summer to ominous winter, Cheryl clipped a recipe for walnut bread from the paper. How would I like a walnut loaf for my birthday? she said.

Her choice of recipes almost certainly was the result of subliminal squirrel influence.

Of course I would, I said. I’d also like birthday food with frosting.

With last week’s abrupt weather change — as dramatic as any I can recall — my daily wardrobe was no longer appropriate. My sandals were a joke, my T-shirts ridiculous.

I hauled out every piece of winter clothing I could find, greeting my sweaters and long-sleeve shirts as long-lost friends. Where have you guys been?

I’d forgotten that I even owned a rain jacket. What’s rain? Does anyone remember?

It’s all well and good to dress up in winter clothes, but until you turn on the furnace you’re just masquerading. As always, the furnace-on moment was electric.

I went running from vent to vent to sniff the gusts of fried dust. Say what you will about the excesses of technology, manufactured warm air is intoxicatingly wonderful.

For a moment, I felt guilty. Not everyone in Napa has access to similar fonts of balminess. What about the homeless? What about people who can’t pay their PG&E bill?

Those thoughts were a bummer, but they made me love my jets of warm air all the more. What a glorious life I have. There is no essential that I do not possess.

As I stood over a floor vent, savoring its tropical breeze, my eye caught a streak of gray outside my dining room window. What the heck. Another of those frantic squirrels — a regular Evel Knievel — had jumped the six-foot gap between my neighbor’s house and an outbuilding.

He hit his mark with distance to spare and kept running — not surprisingly — in the direction of the nearest walnut trees.

It took me a moment to process what I’d just seen, a walnut-besotted squirrel making an amazing leap.

Fittingly enough, Cheryl has stepped up her campaign to have me eat more non-animal protein, specifically — what else? —walnuts. It’s no longer acceptable for me to have my morning bowl of oatmeal without a crunchy topping of squirrel food.

Personally, I don’t think walnuts taste all that great, but I comply. I want to have the energy and the derring-do of squirrels. I want walnut power.

Kevin can be reached at 256-2217 or Napa Valley Register,  P.O. Box 150, Napa 94559 or kcourtney@napanews.com