“What if squirrels are just dragons without wings.” I was asked this by a grown adult; I haven’t been able to ignore it since that day. Whenever I see a squirrel I have to watch them just in case they spray a molten blast of fire. Now, I don’t actually watch them for that reason, but I do watch them… a lot. I know their hiding places. I can identify them by appearance. I know their family’s hereditary traits (bleach white tails that eventually turn gray which is unique to family that has their nest above my garage).
My bedroom is the basement, and where a normal person would have put their bedroom, I have placed my office (I am asleep, why would a sleeping person care about the view). My office looks out on my backyard. From my vantage point I can see wildlife, my garden, and depending on the season, wonderful old trees or a parking lot. But the thing that I really care about year round is the squirrels. The birds are pretty dope too but the tiny dragons have stolen my heart with their backwards claws, flicky tails, and scurrying through the treetops.
I’ve imagined them fighting the birds for supremacy of the yard. Sparkles, my lovely cat, begs me to let her out so she can “play” with them, but we don’t need the final boss to show up in this RPG. In general, my imagination runs wild as I sit on a call and the squirrels come to visit. It’s gotten to the point where I know different squirrels and their story (or the story I applied to them). [Click “Read More” to navigate these nuts]
It wasn’t always this way, for the longest time I didn’t care about the squirrels. But, once I had a garden, I didn’t want to lose my produce to those that inhabited my backyard. At a friend’s, I had seen a squirrel carry a full beefsteak tomato off a plant, eat half, then leave. How could that sack of shit eat only half the tomato?
So I did research, with Beefcake Bernie defeated, I wanted to make sure that these ninja’s of the trees wouldn’t consume my harvest. A search here, a yahoo there, in the end, I got to an answer for why squirrels only eat some of the tomato and then leave it. They don’t consume tomatoes for flavor, they do it to get the moisture when thirsty.
Thus, I had my answer, I needed to keep the squirrels from getting thirsty; to that end, I filled a pan with water and placed it by the door so I could confirm that they were drinking the water and not eating my tomatoes. It worked and an unintended consequence was I started to learn their schedule.
A quick aside, my family has a troubled past with squirrels. My cousin has one… that lives in his home. Now this cousin has put a special hole in the wall so the squirrel can exit the home and enter a purpose built atrium that is outdoors but screened. This squirrel eats papaya, and well, fruit and produce I’ve never seen. Bernard is super happy and the family jokingly added the squirrel to the family tree with the cousin being the father… normal, right?
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, that’s just one family member… but you’d be wrong. My mother also has a squirrel she loves and feeds. I’ve seen it, the squirrel comes down from the nearby tree, goes to the window, looks for her, and then goes to the door to get her nuts (we’ve watched her get pregnant and enter motherhood). This squirrel consumes: pistachios, almonds, walnuts, but won’t eat bread. You are obviously assuming that many people feed squirrels and it is a totally normal hobby to have, and I would agree, but this squirrel now has started coming into the home, getting her nuts, and then leaving to go back to her nest. She’s a guest.
With such hereditary traits coursing through my veins, I have grown concerned that I may be going “nutty”. Is this my life, watching squirrels drink water, understanding which visit and when, and where they live? Should I talk to someone about this? Obviously, I am not terribly concerned, as I prepare to film Squirrel Whisperer, They’re Just Little Bears.
There’s one squirrel who I’ve personally taken an interest in (non sexual bro). This guy, and trust me he is male, showed up one day and was bald. Not like a full blown balding but between his shoulder blades and on both of his front forearms there was no hair and I could see his wrinkled skin. I wasn’t intrigued by his story but more concerned that he could be poisoning my gracious watering hole, because at the time, I assumed it was a disease based baldness; I watched him.
As time went on, I was able to see that his movements were normal and his super bushy tail implied that he wasn’t losing his hair anywhere else. He was strong and capable, a true warrior of the squirrel people. And when the time came, and it would come as the Cardinal Court was meeting to prepare for the next round of combat, he would be reenlisted by the squirrel queen, Esmeralda, to fight the sparrow army. He was dubbed, Wrinkle, because of his gross back wrinkles.
Wrinkle visited later in the morning than the other squirrels, and over the course of weeks, I was able to see that the lack of hair must have been from a fight with a car or grill because the hair had started to grow back like grass on a freshly seeded patch of dirt. It started sparsely, and I grew concerned for his safety in winter. But time was kind and we got a warmer Fall than normal (which isn’t great because, you know, climate change), so he was given time to grow in his hair and get swol on nuts.
He still has his wrinkles but they are only visible to someone who knows to look for the fur falling in a weird pattern. I may never know if Wrinkles got his lifelong scar after his victory over Rudolph the Red Tailed Hawk or a grilling kerfuffle. But, I know he is alive, well, and fat enough for winter.
I assume you’re wondering, and rightfully so, why the huge long story about squirrels and their lasting war with the birds? No reason, I’ve spent more time with the squirrels than with people. If I had to make up some great profound reasoning, I can… give me five minutes, I need to strategize with the squirrels.
I’m back.
The moral: the world is more complex and more interesting than you would assume. If you just take time to sit and watch, the world’s mysteries will open themselves up to you and maybe you’ll meet your own Sir Wrinkles.
I know, that’s pretty generic bullshit for 2020. Here’s the real moral, I like squirrels, they look like tiny bears sometimes, and other times, they behave like little dragons. But pay attention, they’re plotting something.