Your accent is determined by where you live. More specifically, words are shaped by the temperature range in one’s part of the world. In North America, anyway.

I’m pretty sure that I’m right about this.

For example, people in the South speak with a drawl because the climate is hot. The further southeast you go, the slower the mouth moves because the lips have to from shapes against increased humidity. Move west past the Rockies and the load lightens, but it’s still hot enough for slow, lilting conversation.

The Great White North is famous for words like ‘about’ being pronounced as ‘aboot’. Frozen facial muscles can only stretch wide enough to form a small, round shape. Making an ‘oo’ sound retains more warm air inside, too, than a full blown ‘ow’.

I blame my Midwest nasal twang on the Great Lakes effect. Try as I might not to sound like badly-tuned violin, my sinuses are in such a constant state of flux that most words sound like mosquito in August. This year’s pitch and fall from cold dry wind to warm rain (thunderstorms this early February morning) make it especially difficult to round the tones.

Even the animals that graze on wintering roots and buried grubs in the floodplain run for higher ground when any door is opened. They are conditioned to sudden rainfall. We leave the outbuilding doors open, even on high blue sky days like yesterday.

Jimmy Toskr has no reason to speak at all. He snoozes comfortably in his hammock, stretching just enough to give the camera an eye that communicates well enough. There’s even an accent in there somewhere, one that will be quite vocal as squirrel hormones build outside in the treetops.