day with squirrels ...

[sharon_dubois]

or squirrely day, I'm not sure. This is how the day started. Looked out the kitchen window while pouring a bowl of cereal and saw a furry beast bouncing around. Didn't have my glasses on so grabbed the binocs and closely observed a tree rat. It was a red squirrel - a variety seen only one other time in my back yard. I pondered the sighting as I ate breakfast and then went out the front door to discover a black squirrel screaming, from it's perch in my street tree, at a fox squirrel rummaging around the mulch at the side of my yard.

When I first moved in, the yard (and trees around it) contained only fox squirrels. Slowly the black squirrels moved in from the east until a couple of years ago they crossed the street and are now the predominate squirrels on the block. We will have to see if the red squirrel was just a scout from the south or a settler and who will win the battle for ownership of my yard. My bet is on the neighborhood cats but that is another story.

So I went to school. This was the last day for two of my classes. So wacky behavior continued for most of the afternoon, just not tree rats behaving badly.

I stopped on the way home for some Chinese takeout because by this point I am just frazzled. Watched some TV, killed some pigs and am not looking forward to tomorrow -- it being a day of meetings when I should be grading. Grades are due Monday so it will be a fun weekend. Then two weeks off !!!!!!!!!!!!!#@#$!!

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Red squirrels specialize in opening cones for seeds -- fir, spruce, pine, you name it. They will raid feeders, but yours probably won't stay around unless your neighborhood supplies such. We see them in town now and then, but they were much more common out at the nature center.

[cailleuch.livejournal.com]

Well the freeway right-of-way 3 blocks away is planted with a lot of assorted evergreens as a neighborhood sound break. And the entire block south used evergreens for the back fence line, unlike my block which is all chain link fence. This might be enough with feeders to keep a couple of red squirrels fed. A friend on that block has seen two of them for a couple of years.

We have lots of the red squirrels on the mountain behind the camp and also my favorite tree rat -- flying squirrels.