Love or hate them, squirrels are a part of the everyday existence of most people. They have an inordinate amount of intelligence centered around obtaining food to keep their fluffy tailed selves alive and it is this that instills the strong reactions in humans.
I am on the amused side and enjoy setting up squirrely problems for them to solve as they wriggle their little noses in delight at the scent of the treat I most often tempt them with: Brazil nuts.
I'm not the only one that loves them (OK, love may be too strong a word - let's settle for appreciates) - Christina Clark rescues and rehabilitates the little rodents. She sells animal rehab equipment from her website so that you, too, can help the little guys.
Much attention has been paid to squirrels of late due to the success of the trained squirrels in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie. You know the one. BBC News has cracks the story on how an army of rodents stole the show - almost. There are squirrel trainers out there and believe me, when a nut is at stake, these fuzzy little rodents will do just about anything to get it.Harvard even devoted a study to their cleverness - that of the squirrels, not themselves, silly! Different levels of intelligence
the highest being attributed to those squirrels who lifted off. Tenacious, aren't they?Whole rodential websites exist with page after page given over to gray or red squirrliness. T-shirts, games, drawings and other buyables have people pulling out their credit cards and filling their houses and wardrobes with buck-tooted rodents. Of course, some people will lay down quite a bit of cold hard cash in order to fight the power - squirrel power, that is. Squirrel baffles and subsonic devices exists that keep the squirrels from backyards and attics and some people go so far as to reveal in squirrel death to the point of step-by-step taxidermy videos. Baffling, really. Considering the hijinks they get up to, I think squirrels have more than earned their place in my backyard.
But watch out, squirrel haters!
If you've got a problem with them, they might be coming after you instead of you coming after them!
2 comments:
I think you need to set up a tarzan swing for your squirrels. You neglected the story about Trouble and the "Lemon Marange Pie" That's how you keep the squirrels on their toes
My sister used to have a second floor apartment in an old house covered with ivy. Those damn squirrels would leap from tree to window sill to wall like Indiana Jones.
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