Plumb out of answers

One South Carolina town has been so flush with squirrels this year that even its toilets have been flush with squirrels.

In fact, Channel 10, WIS-TV, broadcast a report about one local homeowner, Rose Strohman-Morris, of the town of North, who discovered one such bushytail getting down and dirty hanging out in her plumbing just this week.

Oddly enough, according to the report, she is not the only resident who has reported rodents in their restroom. The town's mayor, Earl Jeffcoat, is quoted by the TV station as calling this mini-invasion "a nuisance."

The locals attribute it to the overpopulation of squirrels. But that seems, to say the least, an oversimplification. And there have been reports of this happening before, in other locales: In March 2011, in Malawi. In Oklahoma, in 2010. And in 2008, in Canada, when it was a flying squirrel that landed down under the lid.

Squirrels are tree dwellers, not potty animals. It's unlikely they actively seek out homeowners' bidets and bowls in the hopes of scoring a big nut cache.

And a toilet is hardly an ideal receptacle for anything you wish to store for the long haul.

Clearly, the squirrels are there as uninvited guests: Those with standing offers to come to dinner or perhaps Sunday brunch are more likely to make their entrance through the front or side door, wiping their paws delicately first on the welcome mat.

A toilet is the last place you'd drop into as a guest of honor.

How the squirrels ended up in some folks' pipes and bowls is anyone's guess at this point but it's clear if the squirrels had any choice in the matter, they'd hightail (or bushytail) it out of there, especially if they knew what they were getting into, in the first place.

Fortunately, making use of an improvised catchpole of sorts, Strohman-Morris was able to clear the living clog safely from her bowl, taking him outside, thus saving a life and leaving the toilet free for its somewhat earthier mission.

You can bet the squirrel wasn't the only one who immediately felt relief.

Squirrels take the cake!

Sure, there's inarguably something sweet about squirrels. But I never expected it might be the frosting that surrounds their tiny paws.

And still, there you see them - squirrels, that is - adorning cupcakes, layer cakes and the occasional torte. Paws down, they're the cutest things to come along since someone thought a bride-and-groom topper might be an appropriate inclusion for the dessert portion of a wedding reception. (The two examples seen here were provided to me via Facebook postings, and I am fairly certain there are at least a baker's dozen more out there.)

How did this happen? Squirrels, with their paintbrush tails and noble posture, squirrels, with their pledge-of-allegiance pose and folded paws, squirrels, with their wide, wild glassy eyes, have always had their images co-opted for home decor. You see them as lamp finials, fencepost toppers, doorbell icons and even weathervanes. You see their images on switchplates, welcome mats and even throw-rugs.

And now, squirrels have begun showing up in the bakeries of the world - and not just because someone left the front door open and got careless with a bag of hazelnut flour. Squirrel cookie-cutters are nothing new, of course. But now the market is starting to display squirrel cake- and cupcake-toppers, all imaginative things that set the stage, and the theme, for an entire feast based on their woodland antics.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a happy revelation whenever squirrels can be accepted as consumer decor, instead of a consumer delicacy (as is advocated in hotspots such as the United Kingdom right now).

But let good manners prevail, nonetheless. Enjoy a slice of squirrel-adorned layer cake but eat it now. Don't squirrel it away for another moment. German chocolate cake or hazelnut torte was not meant to be buried.

Like the squirrel, live in the moment, especially when it comes to desserts. Let good manners and good taste be the icing on the cake.

Let's put the squirrels in charge

The news alert from CNNMoney.com logged in with an almost celebratory swiftness: The headline, "Mortgage deal could bring billions in relief," heralded word of a $26-billion foreclosure settlement - which could climb as high as $34 billion when all is said and done - to provide struggling homeowners relief in their indebtedness to some of the nation's largest lenders.

What followed next, on the computer screen, was a very different kind of headline: "Nuts! Diamond Foods boots CEO, stock plunges." Bad accounting practices, it seems, have plagued this giant purveyor of tree nuts, and Diamond's most recent woes derive from its entangled payments to the nation's nut farmers.

Bad deals. Higher (or lower) expectations than reasonable. Ill will bordering on corruption, perhaps. Lack of transparency and honesty. These are the plagues eating away at any number of American businesses and passed along to sour the nation's economy.

What to do? Let's really get down to business, America: Let's put the squirrels in charge.

Consider their track record: How many forests are presently in foreclosure? For that matter, how many saplings are being offered on a short sale? How many maples and oaks have been taken over by branches of JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America?

No, trees are squirrels' homes, fair and square, and when they go out on a limb, it isn't to put their investments at risk. Quite the contrary, squirrels go out on a limb to warn other squirrels of the predatory practices of some of the major locals: owls, hawks, feral cats and raccoons. (Mind you, none of these predators happen to be lenders, either. When they play, they play for keeps.)

Put the squirrels in charge and if you're a homeowner drawing too close to a bad deal, you'll hear the alarm call high up in the trees and your solvency will be preserved.

As for Diamond nuts, their salvation would be in replacing that tossed CEO with a squirrel. Conflict of interest? Hardly. Who values these precious commodities more than squirrels? The tough nut of business dealings is nothing compared to the hard shell protecting walnut meat. Anyone who can crack that can easily take apart a bad strategy and save a company's reputation.

With squirrels in charge, companies such as Diamond, or even the Big Three auto makers, need never worry either about dire straits precipitating a government bailout. Oh, squirrels are familiar enough with handouts - visit Central Park in Manhattan or the Mall in Washington, D.C. and you'll see real pros shaking down the public. But this is the art of the deal, of shrewd negotiation, not begging from a position of weakness.

Put the squirrels in charge and you'll see companies with renewed optimism and leaner operating costs. The board of directors would become just one more board to gnaw on. Successful, whittled-down companies, would be able to bury their competition in record time. "Being in the Black" would become a meaningless, outdated description for a ledger, supplanted by the more meaningful "Being in the Grey."

After all this national recovery, the possibilities for growth would then be limitless.

And in this Presidential Election Year, it only stands to reason that squirrels, swift and skilled jumpers that they are, may want to take one more logical, well-placed final leap. Flicking their tails as they whiz past the celebrated White House squirrels on the lawn on Pennsylvania Avenue, they'd be ready to sink their teeth into the next business, running the Oval Office.

Punxsutawney Bueller's Day Off

Just supppose, in the predawn hours of Feb. 2, the Big Red Phone rings at Weathercaster Central Headquarters in Pennsylvania, and it's the long-suffering groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, telling the boss he won't be in to work?

Or, in Phil's case, he won't be out to work?

Would he stay underground or emerge secretly for a Hollywood-style day of wildness, finally answering the age-old question of how much wood he might truly chuck if his cheerful, cheeky chucking went unchecked?

OK, maybe Phil wouldn't pull a Matthew Broderick-style movie sickout, but face it, if the groundhog ever became a no-show, burrowing down deep beneath the shadows, it would leave the rest of the weather-conscious world in something of a hole too.

Ah, but we do have options. Taking our cue from the current election season here in the U.S., we can hold primaries and elect a stand-in among his various cousins. The prairie dog, after all, has already been given prognosticator status in the American West, where there are no woodchucks to do the dirty work. Further north, some folks look to the mighty marmot.

Then there are the flying squirrels. As nocturnal beings, they would have no shadow-seeking to challange them but perhaps, as these light-footed beings take skyward, we could look for spring in their step instead.

Best of all, there would be no partisan politics to contend with. No mud-slinging - except, as expected, by the beavers.

The Order Rodentia is, thankfully, a nation governed by one party. At least in the political sense.

With regard to other sorts of parties, well, the one-workday-a-year-off for the slacker known as Punxsutawney Bueller could lend new meaning being a party animal altogether: beer can in one paw, TV remote in the other, he'd get his underground stereo blasting.

No doubt he'd boogie to the beat, even after the sun set on the music, chucking as much wood as a woodchuck could, to the song of the day: The BeeGee's "Shadow Dancing."

This chuck's not chuckling

2012 may well be the year that stumps even Punxsutawney Phil, the legendary prognosticating rodent. His cousins - Malverne Mel, Holtsville Hal and even his Canadian counterpart, Wiarton Willie - are likely dumbfounded too.

Even while many of us living in northern climates bask in a sun that somehow seems too strong for this post-solstice season, the question on everyone's not-so-frozen lips is somewhat different this year: How many weeks left until winter?

We are, it seems, shadow-boxing with this page of the calendar. And for even the most hibernation-prone among us, the issue has become something to lose sleep over: Where is winter? We are, it seems, being taken by storm in an unexpected way: A blitz of sunshine. And these oddly warmer days have begun to, well, snowball: Day after day of bright sun. A dusting of white to tease us. Even the chipmunks, yawning off their lighter cloak of sleep, seem confused.

Winter itself appears to have gone underground, reveling in the great torpor that was once the province of Phil and his ilk instead. So has the groundhog been deprived of the Arms of Morpheus? Will he ever again manage to achieve the R.E.M. stage of sleep, that deepest level which unwraps the gifts of all our wildest dreams, burrowed beneath consciousness?

To sleep, perchance to dream, dear Phil. Skip the holiday if you must, and snore your happy snore past Feb. 2 and beyond.
It's OK. As long as you close your eyes and dream of winter.
Make it happen. Chuck this weather.
Spring will come soon enough.

'Tis the season to be ... appreciative

And so, among the squirrel-loving community, the December festivities are behind us and our own holiday season has finally arrived. It is a week or so of glory unto the highest - in this case, the highest branch:

Saturday, Jan. 21, Squirrel Appreciation Day, through Thursday, Feb. 2, Groundhog Day marks a time for rituals of deep winter napping, acorn-gathering, ceaseless chattering and, more often than not, going out on a limb. For the squirrels, at least, if not for us.

Even for the most orthodox and observant arboreal citizens who partake in this season, these rituals offer no opportunity for introspection or reflection: Rodents aren't known for their talents at self-assessment. When you're at the bottom of the food chain, it hardly seems an asset.

Neither is this a time for them to exchange gifts or indulge in acts of charitable giving: In their cache-as-cache-can world, squirrels have a notorious aversion to poverty, particularly their own. They covet one another's nuts. (Holiday season or not, when was the last time you saw a soup kitchen in an oak tree?)

And frankly, this is not even a season sweetened by melodies and caroling. Squirrels burst the winter silence with their pointed cacophany, their ill-mannered, loud and often dissonant chatter.

Squirrel Appreciation Day? It's all the same to them.

Ah but how do we humans - more inclined toward gratitude and related emotions - mark the season? We do our observing by serving. We deck the halls (and every place else) with bags of nuts. Cobs of corn. Chunks of bread.

And we dress in the festive colors of the holidays. Basic gray or perhaps even red for certain parts of the country. Or for those in the luckier regions to have even more variants of the species, a rare white or completely black outfit.

Somewhere after the reindeer of Christmas have departed and the bunny of Easter has yet to arrive, we encounter the simple squirrel of Appreciation Day.

This tiny bushy-tailed ornament makes every tree a holiday tree.

It takes so little to appreciate them.
Speak softly and carry a big nut.

And go forth, appreciatively.

Portrait of the artist as a Young Squirrel

Add this to the list of notable movements in fine art: Cubism, Expressionism, Impressionism, Surrealism and now, Nuttism.

Nuttism comes to us courtesy of Winkelhimer Smith, a rescued eastern grey who believes that wielding a squirrel-hair paintbrush is hardly an artist's sure-fire route to the School of the Masters.

Rather, you need to engage the whole squirrel.

As we see in this video, Winkelhimer has matters clearly in paw.



Given the artist's diminutive size, one could argue the style more closely mimics Minimalism. And given the artist's unlikely talent, one might even press for inclusion in Surrealism. But Winkelhimer bears not even a hint of the signature Salvador Dali moustache and, of course, the facially hirsute Dali was never known for a matching, flamboyantly bushy anterior end.

Clearly, sciurus carolinensis could argue with success that this is Romanticism, plain and simple. There is something about his style, and the tilt of his talented paw, that touches the heart.

The bigger question, however, may well be this: What is Winkelhimer's next masterpiece to be? "Still Life With Walnut?" "Nude Descending a Maple?"

We can only expect great things.

Teaching Samoa a few tricks

The Pacific island nation of Samoa made New Year's Eve news this week through its elimination of Friday from the calendar - this week alone - and taking a headlong, well-publicized jump directly into Saturday. The Samoans have remade the days of the week this week largely for economic reasons: They want to align their schedules more readily with their present and future trade partners.

If this seems revolutionary, imaginative, creative and outlandish, well, think again: Squirrels have been doing this sort of thing for centuries, ever since humans and squirrels collided along the woodland path.

Squirrels long ago decided there would be no need for any Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or even Sunday. No Sabbath, no holy day of rest. (Squirrels don't rest much anyway). No special holidays, three-day weekends, even any annual White Sales (squirrels don't need bed linens), Fourth of July specials or even Labor Day weekends (squirrels don't join unions).

To squirrels, every day is simply Nut Day. So this is how the squirrel calendar looks:

Nut Day
Nut Day
Nut Day
Nut Day
Nut Day
Nut Day
Nut Day

Easy, no? With the hopes of aligning themselves more readily with the trade partners who freely toss them nuts, squirrels are out there every day of the week - which is always the same day of the week - ready to receive whatever type of kernel their trade partners may be exporting in their direction.

They don't need watches. They don't need calendars. They don't need anything except the ticking clock inside them that sounds the alarm, with each sunrise, "T.G.I.N. - Thank God It's Nut Day!"

Take that, Samoa. You think you're so clever. But you can't outsmart the squirrels. They'll always be one day ahead of you.

Springtime in December

The Christmas carols have faded and the nursery rhymes are about to begin.
Listen carefully: You can already hear the sounds of Baby Squirrel Season 2012. Mass production is already under way.

The squirrels out there - the ones chasing each other - are not engaged in the squirrel version of any post-Christmas reindeer games. And they're not training for the winter Olympics. Here in the northeast, the annual mating game has begun and it is no meaningless frolic. The parts these squirrels are moving across the gameboard aren't exactly gamepieces. These are squirrel "private parts," and this is the serious business of rodent reproduction.

Heaven help us: All I wanted for Christmas this year was a kinder, gentler form of Squirrel Birth Control.

Is it too much to ask someone to fly a helicopter over the world's forests and, just for one season and one season alone, drop thousands of itty bitty chastity belts into the woods?

Would it be too impossible to borrow some of those old Army training films that were shown to soldiers to turn them off to promiscuity and line up the squirrels for a viewing?

Can some clever wildlife biologist please devise an "on-off switch" for squirrel hormones, just to give rehabilitators a break?

I'm not saying forever here but for just one season? It would be like winning the Lottery for many of us.

But Mother Nature supposedly knows better. And there's no force stronger than that, except perhaps the birds, the bees and - sorry to say - the squirrels.

Spring is coming sooner than you think. And this year's Class of 2012, just like last year's graduates and the ones before, all failed sex education.

Brace yourself.

When trees become slackers

It's worrisome enough to make even the most mellow squirrel-loving human turn a deep shade of eastern grey: This is supposedly a "bust" year for acorns, following the acorn "boom" of 2010.

That's not good. Why should humans be indulging their dollars and senses in the untethered consumerism of the holidays - reveling first in the retail orgy of Black Friday - when squirrels can barely shop for the basics to fill their winter pantry? If the scientists are correct, this will be a winter of wanting.

It doesn't seem fair.

Yet a recent New York Times article claims the dearth of these seminal trees-to-be is most evident in places such as Central Park, and will have a ripple effect affecting both predator and prey. Humans are not left out of this ill-fated equation.

As squirrels go, so goes the nation.

Blame the trees which, apparently, are not doing their part. Acorn production, according to one forest ecologist, is well below the average 25 to 30 pounds a year per tree, for oaks alone.

Is this a workplace stoppage? Are the trees going on strike? Or perhaps, like so many American production facilities, perhaps even trees have begun to outsource their output to overseas facilities where tree labor is cheaper (and not even unionized)? Perhaps even underage trees are being forced to produce acorns before they are even mature enough to handle it?

It's easy to see, from the squirrels' point of view, where this can all lead back home in the U.S.: No nut-cache to be had means a future rife with hunger and with few available jobs because there is nothing to bury. Fewer acorns to sprout and grow means, ultimately, fewer trees to house squirrels of future generations.

Hunger, unemployment and homelessness - sound familiar?

The Federal Acorn Reserve Bank doesn't seem to want to kick in its share - adjusting the interest rate on acorns or maybe giving squirrels easier access to acorn credit - but then, would squirrels even accept government handouts at this point? I think not.

There has to be a solution.
This would ordinarily be a tough nut to crack but, unfortunately, there are none of them to be found.

Giving no thanks for all they can eat

They are guests at my Thanksgiving table, and they are too numerous to count. How fortunate they haven't demanded use of the good china, which maxes out at 12 placesettings.

They feast on a stuffing of pecans, walnuts, almonds, berries, corn kernels and the occasional acorn. There is no turkey on this menu - they would not want it anyway. They need no gravyboats or soup spoons. They need no neatly folded napkins.

They simply gather together, each and every one jostling, reaching, munching and squabbling, just like any other ravenous family whose uneasy reunion is spurred by a desire to gorge. In fact, the familial resemblance between them is startling. Gray, after all, is an easy middle ground that even the not-so-style conscious can embrace. Still, it is hard to discern the mothers and fathers from their own offspring. A big appetite is obviously an inherited trait, a dominant gene, and they have passed it on through the generations.

To get to this feast, they had only to battle the holiday traffic out of the tree limbs and the tree trunks. Repeatedly. And by nightfall, they will be bloated with the day's digestion and their own self-importance. Today, after all, was all about them. Wasn't it?

No, they will not say grace before this meal. They never do.
Nor will they give thanks afterward. They never have.
And if supplies run short, they will merely chatter their teeth, stamp their feet and perhaps the boldest among them will take a catapult leap at the screen door. This Thanksgiving buffet is, after all, an outdoor table.

Ah, but the leftovers: An untouched acorn, buried for another day and then forgotten, adds to the forest. A bypassed walnut, packed deep into the earth, begets a tree. Perhaps then, for desssert, we need to serve a slice of gratitude of our own instead.

Let us give thanks, even if the squirrels - boisterous, bad-mannered and bawdy as they are - do not.

May our hearts and our doors always be open to them.

Crime and punishment

Your Honor, she is not a criminal. Annick Richardson may be many things, but the Ohio woman is not a criminal. The London Daily Mail, which has been following her case, describes her in its headline as a "Compulsive Squirrel Feeder." The somewhat less imaginative press here in the United States, simply refers to her as "nuts," careful to adorn the adjective with quotes, lest the media themselves end up in court themselves on defamation charges.

And now, the Ohio animal-lover has had her day in Kettering Municipal Court, facing as much as 60 days in jail and considerable fines, for blanketing her suburban Ohio neighbohood with peanuts, squirrel feeding stations and dishes of water. The neighbors claim that her Johnny Appleseed-like actions (Joanie Squirrelseed, perhaps?) have spurred a sudden and rapid increase in the local squirrel population.

Please, folks: Richardson is merely feeding the squirrels, not copulating with them.

Besides, peanuts are not fertility drugs - we would have a less truncated elephant population if that were so. Peanuts are simple legumes. (Frankly, if Richardson should be faulted for anything, it is for not feeding a more natural food such as walnuts or pecans, since legumes are not nuts and, as such, are not "real" squirrel food. But that is beside the point. Or perhaps she is also guilty of spreading America's obesity crisis to its native rodents by super-sizing them.)

Her Ohio neighbors are weary of finding spent shells - the kind fired by double-barreled squirrels - and tired of the lawns being dug up (which, by the way, many suburbanites pay a hefty fee to have done by professional landscapers each spring. But again, that is beside the point here too.)

A confident Richardson has assured the press she is not a villain nor is she a monster. A pre-trial hearing has been set for December to pursue her case yet further.

Ah, but perhaps we squirrel-lovers shall all ultimately be jailed for our presumed sin. We have gotten the local squirrels hooked on the Nut Drug, then made regular drug drops in our neighborhoods to keep the addicts in line.

Your Honor, if she is guilty then we all are too. Shackle us all and lead us away. But provided our county jails still allow visitors, as most surely do, we should not despair:

Even in the toughest holding cell, the space between the bars is wide enough to permit entry by the very small. And I suspect that one swift, fur-bearing, bushy-tailed visitor will not forsake us in our incarcerated state.

In one paw, no doubt, will be carrying a small gift for us, the wrongly imprisoned: Neatly sandwiched between two shelled pecans, a jailer's key.