Greetings, readers. Today we consider silly squirrels as seem in our backyards. Here’s an article about them by my friend, author and naturalist, Peggy Sias Lantz (click her name to visit her website).
Squirrels: Friends or Foes?
by Peggy Lantz
There are many backyard animals: squirrels, raccoons, rabbits, armadillos, frogs and toads, even coyotes and maybe foxes. Do you like to watch them play, or do you wish they’d go away? (Oh, my, now I’m a poet!)
The squirrels get in your bird seed, eat the new buds on your bushes, and drop twigs and pine cone bits on your sidewalk. They can chew their way through the screen on your swimming pool and will bite if cornered.
But they’re such fun to watch chasing each other round and round the tall oak trees and clambering along the highest branches. Don’t you envy their agility?
The tail of a squirrel is about the same length as its body. The well-known naturalist, Ernest Thompson Seton, wrote, the squirrel “looks like a huge tail drifting along, pushing a small animal ahead of it.”
The tail is a multi-purpose tool. It’s a stabilizer, a sunshade, a way to communicate (with other squirrels if not us), an umbrella, a muffler on cold nights, and even a parachute.
What do squirrels need?
Squirrels, like all creatures, need food, water, and nesting sites. They live where deciduous trees are, mainly oaks that supply them with acorns. (Deciduous trees are those that lose their leaves in winter.) Fruits and mushrooms are part of their diet, too, and – of course – birdseed from your feeder. And water from your birdbath.
Holes in trees provide places to raise the family, or they may build a messy nest of twigs and leaves. Three or four babies are born about six weeks after mating, naked, blind, helpless, weighing only half an ounce. Mother squirrel nurses the babies for nine to ten weeks, but she doesn’t bring them food. As soon as they are able, the babies will nibble on leaves and buds and insects within reach. At two months they can crack an acorn. At ten to 12 weeks they’re on their own. Mom abandons them and goes looking for a new mate.
What else do squirrels do?
Squirrels don’t hibernate, not even in snow country. In the fall, they bury nuts about three inches deep, and later in the winter, they find them by smell, eating as much as 80 percent of the ones they buried.
The life expectancy of a wild squirrel is only about a year. They are prey for many predators – hawks (I saw a Red-shouldered Hawk carry one out of my woods), owls, snakes, coyotes, and bobcats. They die in accidents (I saw one fall from my oak tree once, killing it), and from diseases and parasites. They’ve also died from contacting my power line, putting out my lights as well as their own.
It’s a tough life out there. Don’t make it any harder for them. They have a place in Mother Nature’s world. I happen to like having squirrels in my yard.
—END—
Thanks for reading!
Your writer on the wing,
Charlene
Kathleen Brandt
This post reminds me of an Easter Sunday morning many years ago. My mom was on a health-food kick (this would have been the late 60s) and instead of chocolate easter eggs, she hid peanuts – in the shell – for our ‘egg’ hunt. By the time we got back from Mass and ran out to the back yard with our baskets, every single one of those peanuts was gone!
Now, I wonder who did that?
Charlene
Hilarious! Thanks for sharing this story. You made my day, Kathleen.