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Monday, September 25, 2017

I’M A SQUIRREL WATCHER

I’M A SQUIRREL WATCHER

Watching squirrels go by; oh my, my-my*
This Cranky re-run is from September 2013 
Squirrels; to most people these are despicable rodents with big fluffy tails.  To backyard bird watchers they are a menace.  These crafty acrobats find a way into bird feeders and will not leave until the feed is all gone.  Except for what falls to the ground, the birds get nothing. 

My mom was a backyard bird watcher.  She waged a battle with the local squirrels for years.  I learned to just enjoy the show and become a squirrel watcher.

Squirrels can climb the slimmest poles, crawl along any wire, hang from any branch, and avoid any impediment designed to keep them off the feeder. 

I have watched mocking birds and blue jays torture cats by dive bombing them into submission to protect a nest or in the case of mocking birds just for sport.  These birds could not make a squirrel even flinch.  They are acrobats, they are smart, and they are brave. 

They do make mistakes.

Watching these creatures can sometimes be comical.  A squirrel will leap from tree limb to tree limb with incredible dexterity. 

Most of the time. 

I once saw a squirrel which apparently must have passed tree jumping with a low “c” average as it missed its intended limb and tumbled fifteen feet to the ground onto its back. I thought it was dead, but after about ten seconds this fuzz ball rolled to its belly, slowly stood on its hind legs and looked left and right.

“Fall, I didn’t fall, just a big jump that’s all.  Anyone see that? Nobody?”

The squirrel shook off his cob webs and his embarrassment and climbed back up the tree as if nothing ever happened.  They are tough little buggers.

Several months later, a large limb from a tree in my back yard came down in a storm.  This limb had served as a major squirrel highway from one tree to another for years.  The day after it came down, I watched squirrel after squirrel race up the tree and out on the limb only to screech to a halt when they found the highway had disappeared.  They looked confused and bewildered each time.  Some actually ran down, up and out again just to confirm their arboreal roadway was missing. 

A detour was quickly established.

One winter we had a very long cold snap.  I found a squirrel hanging by one hand on a cable line into the house.  He was exhausted and unable to move along the ice encrusted wire.  I looked for someway to help him down when he just fell ten feet to the hard ground. He appeared to be frozen and dead.  I had to move him from the yard or my Labrador would experiment with him.  When I shoveled him into a box,  I could tell he was breathing, not dead, but well on his way.  I put him in the lot behind my house and covered him with leaves so a cat or another predator would not find him.

One hour later I went out to check on the squirrel.  He was gone without any sign of “fowl” play.  The little bugger recovered.  They are tough indeed.

We have hawks in our area.  I love watching the hawks.  They need to eat to survive.  Top on the hawks menu is squirrel.  Sometimes I see this battle for survival; the hawk to eat, the squirrel to live another day.  The hawk will stalk and swoop at the squirrel, and the squirrel will scamper around a tree to escape. 

I love watching the hawks.

I always root for the squirrels.


*Sorry, could not resist.

19 comments:

  1. Love hawks. "Jealous" you can view them from your place. Few and far between here, but did see one today and it was a beauty! Don't see many squirrels here, but always enjoyable to watch "wildlife" or birds.

    betty

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  2. I've heard squirrels are very smart and tough and this post shows it quite well. I'd like to see a hawk/squirrel battle sometime. But if it means moving to America, I'll do without.

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  3. As I have blogged many times, I dislike the destructiveness of squirrels, plus their ability to eat everything in sight, including wooden objects or building parts. I had a regular team of six squirrels determined to outdo the birds, for whom I had spent a fortune on seed and stuff and got nothing.

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  4. You would love it here....we have squirdrels in droves...black, grey, brown, red......you name the squirrel and we've got it. We had to put squirrel guards in the corners of the eaves to avoid having the house opened up like a tin can. One year we took around eight squirrels 'camping' several miles from our house and then released them. We've given up on bird feeders entirely. But you're right. They are fun to watch.

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  5. We have black, grey and brown squirrels here. The brown ones are the most mischievous and of course, most fun to watch.

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  6. Ms. G does it the smart way, she feeds the tree rats (as she calls the squirrels) and the birds at the same time by just scattering the seed on the back deck twice a day and letting everyone come who wants to. Every once in a while she has to put out a humane trap to get a 'possum and relocate it.

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  7. Tree rats ..... them varmints destroy my sweet corn in dry weather, public enemy #1!!

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  8. There should be a squirrel Olympics!!

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  9. I love squirrels. The only way to beat them is to feed them their own food. They prefer corn to birdseed. What is not to love. They are cute, intelligent, uber athletic, and can problem solve with the best of them. It breaks my heart that I have no squirrels here.

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  10. I loves squirrels. For some reason, we don't have too many in our subdivision. Early summer we did have 3 who visited us but Bob the Builder and his constant noise, ran them off. We do have quite a bird population in our front yard. Ienjoy watching them every morning, with my coffee

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  11. When my cat was alive there was never a squirrel in sight. As soon as Squeak went to cat heaven the squirrels arrived for the funeral and have stayed. However, we're going to take care of our Granddaughter's cat in a few weeks...I'm not tell Rocky or Bulliwinkle who's coming to visit. I'm sure the news will travel fast!

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  12. I like watching the squirrels, myself. Fun bunch!

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  13. We have some in our neighborhood and they're entertaining to watch.

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  14. The Grey squirrels are hilarious to watch, there are no bird feeders that are safe from their antics.

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  15. I don't have squirrels here. Wish I did. So do my (inside) cats.

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  16. We might as well be running a squirrel sanctuary. The dogs can't catch them, and now that we're down to one chicken (from 34), the squirrels benefit from Hick still throwing out the same amount of chicken feed every evening. Most evenings, the ground is gray with them. It's kind of fun watching them scatter in about 16 different directions when the dogs start lumbering towards them. They also climb up on the porch and eat dry dog food out of the pans.

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  17. I vote for the hawks. Don't have any use for tree rats.

    Paul L. Quandt

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  18. One of my friends put this contraption outside her sliding glass door where she could stick ears of corn upright onto a nail. Her cats would sit by the sliding glass door all day, watching "animal channel" without having to pay for cable.

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  19. Ha! Another avid squirrel watcher, here. I also annoy my husband by singing "I'm a squirrel watcher, I'm a squirrel watcher, watching squirrels go by, my, my, my" (etc.) ad nauseam. Though I love birds, I actually prefer squirrel watching to bird watching. :)

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