You can just see the meet-cute between two squirrels:

“Come on up to my drey. I have some new etchings I’d like to show you. I’m told they’re early Whistler, and while they’re not signed, they carry an estate stamp. Not to mention, I have a new mid-century modern coffee table.”

The architecture for a drey is a series of divine accidents. They’re imperfectly oval, with curvilinear features and dramatic, spiky cantilevers. Better still (and Ruskin would approve), no two dreys are alike. It takes leaves, mud wattle, twigs, pine-cone fragments, and maybe a little high-proof bodily fluids to make a drey, well, stick. It also takes a dream and, in our example above, a little savoir faire.

A lesser-known secret: dreys are shaggy, amorphous little models for the cosmos. The outside may seem deceptively simple, but the inside is something else again. The best dreys are lined with soft moss and gossamer, fragrant pine needles, and inspirational pillows (“Home Is Where the Nuts Are”). Sorry, Professor Tolkien. A hobbit never had it so good.

Read the full story in the digital magazine above.