The National Post has a story about a fox catching a squirrel right in our neighbourhood.
I understand that this is normal: I’ve seen Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom too you know! Maybe it’s even a good sign that our city can support a fox population.
I’m still glad it’s not someone we know though.
The photographer who took the pictures was nice enough to allow us to post them here.
Photos Courtesy Gary Withers, used with permission.
It’s fall and the oaks trees in the neighbourhood have started to drop acorns.
The neighbours behind us have a huge oak tree in their back yard that our squirrels like to spend time in. This time of year you can hear acorns dropping from that tree and hitting the roof of their house or their car.
Here is an impressive pile of acorns that fell into the street not far from our place. The cars have ground them up by running over them.
Everywhere you can see squirrels running around with an acorn in their mouth, looking either for a place to eat it or to bury it for later.
As we mentioned earlier, some of these buried acorns will sprout, to become the next generation of oak trees. (If a lawn mower doesn’t get them first, that is.)
Piggy has been close to us since he was born, so he’s pretty comfortable around us.
One afternoon, an unfamiliar cat showed up and all the squirrels started barking their little alarm calls to warn each other about it.
Right after the squirrels had calmed down, I decided to see if I could get Piggy to respond to my imitation of the alarm call.
At first he just seems confused by my behaviour. He’s all like: ‘WTF, human?’
But I think eventually he does respond. Watch the video and see what you think.
Piggy’s a good sport. Maybe a less tolerant squirrel would have jumped in my face for trying to play tricks on it.
(See also: Local squirrels freaked out by arrival of new cat)
The Land O’Lakes Patch published this cute story about a Florida woman who saved a baby squirrel from a hawk.
When Emma Hankins first noticed the baby squirrel, it was hanging around her porch looking tired and weak.
The squirrel tried to run out into the yard, but then quickly came back to the porch and looked up at Mrs. Hankins as if to say “help me.”
That’s when Mrs. Hankins noticed a big hawk in one of the trees in her yard. She picked the squirrel up and it went to sleep right in her hands!
She later kept it in a safe place on her back porch and fed it before placing it with a local rehab centre.
Check out the article for the full story. They also have more cute pictures of the squirrel.
Photo © Mark S. Hankins, used with permission.
However, the occasional meal of day old bread is also ok. (Especially since your average urban squirrel probably gets half its calories from discarded pizza crusts picked out of a garbage can.)
Even though our friends over in NY published this post about a month a go, I had to link to it just for the headline: Give us this day our day old bread.
Verily, I say unto you, the linked post has some cute pictures of squirrels eating bread, in various poses. Go check it out now!
