Don't mess with the groundhog

To all of you who scoffed at Punxsutawney Phil's prediction of six more weeks of winter, pay heed to the winter storm that is quickly consuming the East Coast of the United States.

Don't mess with the groundhog!

Phil meant no harm with his February prognostication, he was only doing his job, and as the King of Forecasting Squirrels, this rodent is all pro. Indeed, there are many meteorologists out there who owe him their lives, if not their livelihoods too.

Don't mess with the groundhog.

Folks can throw their Phil Wanna-be woodchucks in front of the TV cameras and vow they're just as accurate as the Big Kahuna of Weathercasting but, in the end, the skies, the clouds and the barometric pressure issue the ultimate final judgment, and that decree says:

Don't mess with the groundhog.

It's going to be a splendid storm, folks, and I plan to enjoy it, to wake up and face the pristine snow where only bird footprints and squirrel footprints leave a tale to tell, like punctuation marks printed neatly across a clean white canvas.

As for me, I wouldn't dream of messing with the groundhog. Besides, he's back in his burrow sleeping for the next couple of weeks or so while we humans grumble about our fate: Into every life a little (or a whole lot) of snow must fall. Just ask the groundhog.

One Texan's housing crisis

In today's edition of the Dallas Morning News, gardening columnist Mariana Greene has transformed herself into a kind of real estate writer: She greets the image of squirrels living in outdoor nesting boxes with the same kind of welcome that the rest of us suburbanites and urbanites usually dole out to freshly built neighborhood McMansions.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/columnists/mgreene/stories/DN-nhg_fool_0219gd.ART.State.Edition1.4aa6eca.html

In her backyard box, she would rather have a screech owl, she writes, because they provide a natural containment for her property's rat problems, owing to the predator-prey relationship between the two.

So when a squirrel moved in instead, it was as strong a case of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) as one might see at a town hall public hearing when a developer proposes a big box superstore where a Little League field had once been. (Not only was this a common rodent but a somewhat corpulent one, making a strong case for a potential lawsuit based on Species Discrimination and Fat Discrimination.)

Do squirrels make bad neighbors? Other than the occasional tomato-plant thievery (so what? Plant a little extra and solve the problem), other than the more-than-occasional bird-feeder raiding (so what, again? Add a second or third feeder, or a platform feeder and enjoy the acrobatics), why fight nature? Unlike the guy next door whose teenaged kids hold pool parties, a squirrel won't blare his stereo until all hours or allow other squirrels' cars to block your driveway when they come to visit. The squirrels' kids also are off and on their own after 14 weeks - not 18 years (or longer). Best of all, if you are lucky enough, the squirrels will bury seeds and nuts that, in years to come, might just save you the cost of hiring a landscaper to do some plantings.

With apologies to Robert Frost who, I presume and hope, was a squirrel lover too, the bottom line is this: Good squirrels make good neighbors.

Big squirrels on campus

I thought the Giant Squirrels of Borneo were big - and capable of big news - until I saw this article, which appears in the student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian:

Coming soon to Locust: big squirrels - News

The university's Art Club will be placing almost two dozen larger-than-life statues of these ubiquitous rodents around the campus, encouraging people to sponsor and, ultimately, decorate them.

The sculptures are a fundraising effort to benefit various campus activities.

Now what eastern gray (or even southern flyer) could take issue with that?

To anyone who thinks squirrels are only good for taking handouts, or hanging out around a bunch of nuts, take notice: These Big Squirrels on Campus are capable of great things!

The doctor, the squirrel - and the hawk

Warning: This is controversial. No matter whose side you're on, this is going to be very controversial:

A surgeon in Vienna, Va., was recently arrested and charged with firing his gun in public - and with cruelty to animals. He fatally shot a hawk in the backyard of his home after he saw it eyeing a young squirrel, one that he and his wife had nurtured after it had been orphaned. The same bird of prey, apparently, had previously caught and killed an adult squirrel in the couple's yard. When the doctor saw the bird return and track the younger squirrel, he tried to chase it off using other means - none of which involved firearms - and then, when those attempts failed, he got his shotgun.

Was he right to fire his weapon in a residential neighborhood? The law clearly establishes he wasn't, and deems this a crime.

Was he right to protect the little squirrel as he did? Another law - in this case, the law of nature -establishes just as clearly that he also wasn't. The doctor's intervention unhooked one of the links in the food chain and disrupted the natural order of predation.

Is it criminal to want to save a life? This is what doctors do for a living, after all, with their human patients. In this case, the doctor had cared for the small helpless squirrel, raised and released him and, when he again fell helpless against the talons of the hawk, the doctor again intervened.

But is it wrong to take a life to save one? Likely there are many who would argue that the predation should have proceeded, uninterrupted. Likely there are others reading this (and at least one person writing this) who wouldn't think twice before doing the same thing.

There are no easy answers.

Stumping in Washington for "Stumpy"

The elections are long over, as is the presidential inauguration, but there is still some unfinished business in one corner of Washington, D.C.: Stumpy the squirrel wants his peanuts. And he wants them NOW.

Stumpy - whose name was inspired by the remaining fragments of his tail - navigates a busy part of Northwest Washington, near the studios of Federal News Radio, where my friend Max works, covering the news. His latest headline report to me - which came accompanied by the photo posted here - was about Stumpy. This was indeed BIG NEWS: Amy, the executive editor at the radio station, had first spied Stumpy near a Dumpster and immediately took pity on his taillessness which she presumed was a flag of his fragility.

Her impression was tossed the next day when she saw Stumpy take on a dog (who was leashed, thank goodness), the squirrel defending his turf with chatters and whatever flicks he could muster from his diminished hind end.

She soon found he had captured her heart - and later, some peanuts she began to leave out for him on a regular basis. That was last autumn, just as the election was foremost on minds in that most political of U.S. cities - and elsewhere.

Stumpy is still in office, so to speak: He makes his rounds outside Amy's first floor office window and Max, ever the intrepid reporter, pressed his cell phone's camera into duty to capture the official portrait you see here.

He took no oath of office, of course - but probably chatters a few good ones, nonetheless, at the occasional passing dog.

Six more weeks of ....

Judging from what's fallen outside our door this morning, Punxsutawney Phil also has a great career ahead of him picking winning Lottery numbers.

But we've gotten more than a mere flurry of flakes - we have a storm of more footprints than I can count: Little exclamation points dotting the path, punctuation marks that serve to complete this sentence: "FEED ME, YOU FOOLS!"

And so, we obey. Happily. Yes, master.

A groundhog does what a groundhog does, and likewise the eastern gray.

Punxsy Phil has predicted six more weeks of ravenous squirrels.

No complaints here.

Well-grounded and hogging ground

How much winter would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck winter?

Six more weeks - maybe. That's what the nation's Top Chuck told us last year, when we chronicled the frosty predictions of Punxsutawney Phil in this blog.

It's that time again. And in a few short hours, we'll once again be putting our faith in a furball instead of a crystal one.

Rodent prognostication isn't limited to Phil and his fellow groundhogs, though. If only we had watched the way squirrels were hoarding their stash earlier this year, we could have known what was going on in the economy, followed their lead, and averted the need for all those bailouts. If anyone had seen the local chipmunks slip away into sleep a little bit earlier this year, they could have figured out that the winter temps would come on fast and furious.

Instead of paying money to psychics, reading our horoscopes in the paper (or online), or simply wishing on a star, we should go outside and feed the squirrels - and then watch them with an interpretive eye. These creatures know a whole lot more than they're letting on.

Meanwhile, the squirrel community has not yet weighed in on the Oscars, the Grammy Awards or even the outcome, later this year, of the U.S. Open. And not one has handed me a winning set of Lottery numbers in exchange for the small fortune I've spent on nuts.

Prognostication, after all, has its limits.

No squirrels in this end zone

A certain team will be missing this year from the big contest in Tampa Bay between football's Steelers and Cardinals: The Eastern Grays.


Nowhere in the noble list of big game sponsors is there a company who, this year, enlisted the help of these agile, photogenic, crowd-pleasing rodents to help showcase their products and services.


Are they nuts? (Apparently not, because a nut company would have chosen the obvious spokesrodent.)


Gone is the genital-chomping squirrel who assailed a dentist in the Trident chewing gum commercial of yore, the screaming, and (fortunately) tire-eluding fellow in the Bridgestone ad, and of course the unforgettable "Running of the Squirrels" high drama staged in Cecil B. DeMille-like fashion for a very forgettable company called EDS.


Are squirrels experiencing layoffs too? In this season when their cousins the chipmunks and the groundhogs are nestled in sweet hibernation, should the eastern gray perhaps rethink the addition of a similar midwinter's snooze too? Granted, that means they would miss the playoffs and Superbowl, even as spectators, but that would open up whole new career possibilities for them in sports advertising once baseball's spring training season is through.

Provided, that is, Major League Baseball can somehow keep them from gnawing at the teams' bats.

Nothing lost in translation

Do squirrels speak Spanish?
Or, perhaps more importantly, do the people of Colombia, South America, speak Squirrel?
The answer, most assuredly, is "Si."
During a monthlong visit to that country, my friends Rich and Luis traveled, visited Luis' family, and took pictures of everything - squirrels included. Apparently, the South American nation that practically deifies the humble java bean also apparently gives an admiring nod to the bushytailed denizens of their trees.
Squirrels get their name, or at least their profile, in lights during the Christmas season, and Rich was thoughtful enough to capture this image of a Christmas squirrel before the glowing rodent clambered up a holiday lightpole where, no doubt, he was building a nest made entirely of incandescent lights and LEDs strung together.

Then, on a visit to a place outside Medellin, they found a restaurant known as Pescadero Trucha Arco Iris (or "fishing place" for a type of rainbow fish) which was furnished with tables and chairs hand-painted by local artists. The chair pictured here would obviously be a place of honor for the squirrel-lovers among us. (It's not clear, however, whether that would obligate one to order something from the menu featuring acorns, nuts or berries.)

Squirrel decor, both indoor and out, can be downright chic. Imagine if the modern furniture designers, Charles and Ray Eames, had been rhapsodic over rodentia. Imagine if the evolving designs of Frank Lloyd Wright had gone through a "Chipmunk Phase."
It is encouraging to think that while some people view squirrels as pests, annoyances and even vermin, others see them as inspiration.
No matter what you call them - and in whatever language you speak their name - they can leave an image buried in your imagination long after you have seen one scamper across your path.
But then, they're good at burying things, aren't they?

He's inclined toward progress

Mr. Tilty is doing fine. This should set the record straight for anyone who has been worried about him (and that includes me).

He was seen out and about during the last snowfall a few days ago and today, I am happy to report, he was back atop his regular nestbox. Weaker squirrels often get picked on and I'd feared he might have been evicted. But no, he has not been thrown out by some cruel rodent landlord or by a contentious roommate wanting to crack nuts privately, late into the night; rather, Mr. Tilty has been sharing his living quarters, as squirrels - even warring ones - often do in the winter because friendship is the greatest warmth that acorns can buy when the temps drop to single digits.

I admire him for the one habit he has displayed, which I find particularly endearing - sitting atop his nestbox, even in these frigid temps, basking in the sun. He takes it all in, crooked angle notwithstanding. Sitting up there, he is full-bodied and apparently happy, his nose sticking almost straight up in the air.

Tilted or not, he seems to be sitting on top of the world.

News on Squirrel Appreciation Day

I wish squirrels read newspapers.
I wish they at least subscribed to them.
Sometimes I even wish they worked for them. Then again, it is entirely possible they already do, judging from the squirrelcentric content of some major papers in the last two or three weeks:

USA Today, the Washington-based paper, reported earlier this month on a far-reaching shortage of acorns from some of the nation's oaks. It was done with respect and with input from scientists, biologists and others who are concerned not just with the botanical consequences but the "squirrical" ones. The story showed a good bit of research, balance and respect on the part of the author who, I suspect, could have had a bushy tail and some formidable incisors. One never knows.

And earlier this week, the venerable New York Times included yet another squirrel-related item in its popular, chatty Metropolitan Diary column: This one about a squirrel whose carefully plotted acorn-hoarding tactics over the years have charmed the doorman of a building near one of the city's parks. I love this one in particular because the survival of urban squirrels is a particular concern of mine, but this one clearly has his game all mapped out. I suspect the reader who submitted this item to the Metropolitan Diary might possibly have been a squirrel, admiring this guy from afar, in an adjacent tree.

Today is Squirrel Appreciation Day - a festival that has the unfortunate acronym of S.A.D., but it is anything BUT. Squirrels have been in the news on a regular basis and it is clear that the Fourth Estate believes in total coverage in black and white (if not also grey and, at times, red and even albino.)

In that respect, it might well be Newspaper Appreciation Day too.

Tilting toward trouble?

Meet "Mr. Tilty."

I first wrote about him in November. We realized then he has not just been a welcome resident in our yard, but he was making his home in a wooden nestbox high in our tall sycamore. We love him for many reasons. He is a symbol of courage and also of determination, living out a difficult winter with varying degrees of disability.

At times he runs and moves in a troublesome fashion, seeing the world at an angle because he lists to one side, like a slowly sinking ship.

In these photos, taken a week and a half ago, that tilt was not so evident. But today, when we saw him, the slight tipping had become a toppling. Once or twice he lost his balance altogether and was lying in the snow, however briefly. He also has an injury to one digit on the left front paw, which appears to be healing - but it is the tilting that is of concern to us now. He can run, he can climb and he can gather food.

But we are worried.

Wish him well. We are monitoring his progress, and his decline, if it continues.

If he cannot continue to make his way in the world and needs us to step in and help him, I hope he will let us. This is a tough winter for everyone - especially Mr. Tilty.

Feeding the squirrels, or feeding ON them?

The subject just won't go away.

A new New York Times story reports once again on a resurgence in the British proposal to eradicate grey squirrels - the acknowledged nemesis of the native reds - by eating them. This notion has been circulating for quite some time, has given butcher shops in the UK a renewed entrepreneurial spirit, and has challenged chefs who possess a desire to appear both creative and patriotic.

What a world. Imagine if we all sought, similarly, to conquer our various enemies by eating them.

Labor union leaders would publish cookbooks containing varieties of souffles one might whip up using recalcitrant CEOs and vicious vice presidents as the main ingredients.

Assembly line workers would hold morale-raising barbecues, with the sole purpose of skewering, marinating and roasting the shop foremen.

The stomach, formerly known only as an organ of sustenance for the body, would now become a sociopolitical battleground. Who could have predicted such a fate for this simple part of our anatomy?

Squirrels of Britain beware: The hand that feeds you all those nuts so lovingly and generously today may simply be seeking to fatten you up for tomorrow - for supper.

Ice is nice

Cupid isn't shooting arrows this year - it's icicles that the little urchin has poised in his bow. But his marksmanship remains uncompromised.

By July of this year, the gossip mills will be churning over Hollywood's most wonderful prehistoric romance - Scrat, the dinosaur-era squirrel who starred in the first two "Ice Age" movies finds true love (or at least pursues it with the same passion accorded his acorns). The animated action movie, "Dawn of the Dinosaurs," will shoot out of the studios with firecracker abandon, just in time for Independence Day, July 4.

Given the company he has been keeping in the previous flicks, from the full-bodied brontosaurus to the tree-top-tall T-rex, this forebear of today's rodents deserves a bit of smooching too, don't you think? Squirrel Does Not Live By Walnuts Alone.

I can't wait to see the fireworks.

Happy Gnaw Year, 2009!

The giant acorn has dropped in Times Square, teeth are chattering, tails are flicking and feet are stomping! That makes 2009 a whole Gnaw Year for squirrels (and the rest of us).

Here are a few resolutions you aren't likely to see squirrels making anytime soon:

1. To let the birds have the best of the pickings at the feeder.
2. To enroll in carpentry school so as to replace, in a workmanlike fashion, any and all wooden parts of decks, roofs, doors and siding that mysteriously got chewed beyond recognition.
3. To never aim for anyone's head when dropping tree nuts, acorns or other large objects (including corncobs), and to apologize profusely if a moving target is hit anyway.
4. To replace any and all expensive, imported and heirloom plantings such as tulip, daffodil and other bulbs that provide a sumptuous buffet al fresco lunch.
5. To be less cute, less disarming, less clever and less endearing and to immediately cease and desist in the brazen stealing of our hearts.

As a species, squirrels have had tens of millions of New Year's Eves and New Year's Days.

Resolutions, like nut shells, were made to be broken.

A backhanded compliment to squirrels?

From today's Bradenton, Florida newspaper - a publication known as the Bradenton Herald - comes this kernel of attempted wisdom, reflecting back on the old year and (pun intended) Heralding the arrival of the new year, 2009.

The author writes:

To be sure, much is unknown about what the coming year will bring.
As myriad economic disasters, yet unseen, unfurl from Wall Street to Washington, to the checkout lane at the local grocery store, caution is in order. So gather ye nuts while ye may: Count your blessings, take good care of those around you, and remember the wisdom of the lowly squirrel as you bid farewell to 2008.

Accompanying this short essay is a rather charming photograph of an aforementioned "lowly" squirrel. Funny but he doesn't look "lowly" to me. He looks downright cute and appealing as he stands on his hind legs, obviously interrupted in the rather sensible act of seasonal nut-gathering.

He's doing the right thing: He's not putting his nuts into a tumbling real-estate market, nor is he investing his acorn in hedge funds (or any other kind of financial shrubbery, hedges or otherwise.) He is not trading them for losing lottery tickets nor placing bets in the trifecta at the Squirrel Derby. He is not engaging other squirrels in pyramid schemes, nor is he buying other nuts on margin, or doing seriously heavy day-trading that might, in this climate, bankrupt the whole forest.

For this he is complimented of course, but the essayist has nonetheless deemed him "lowly." Odd how an animal who can dance in the treetops when the rest of us need ladders to make our wobbly, precarious way there is deemed lowly. Odd how his investments (the acorns) will obviously grow when many of our own human investments are being cut down by the economic axe day by day.

If this is what lowly means, find me an empty branch in the nearest oak tree and pass the acorns, please.

Squirrel philosophy

I've begun wishing people a Happy New Year already, even with the turn of the calender still a few days away. This has never been my favorite holiday and, for the most part, that humbug attitude has been a well-kept secret. I love December, with all its well-lit glory and pageantry and I dread January because it ends the festive season and begins the long haul of another year, all over again.

Today someone returned my well-intentioned wishes with that very sentiment - as clear as if I'd spoken it myself. "I don't know how I feel about the new year, since it means so much time has already passed," she said, "but what is the alternative?"

True. And I confessed to her I was feeling the very same thing. Suddenly the prospect of a new year didn't seem even remotely happy. Then I came home to watch the squirrels frantically burying nuts on our property - and then digging them up and reburying them elsewhere - and I started to reconsider my position.

Squirrels don't know it is December. And they don't know January is coming. They only know they have today and, even during the course of this day, they plan for tomorrow. They bury nuts because of deep instinct that tells them to hope and to plan. Worry, fear and anxiety has no place on their agenda, it is counterproductive and, frankly, foreign to the squirrels' gameplan. And so December's nuts are the same as January's nuts and the burying goes forward with each waking hour, and it goes forward with the same industrious ethic in the morning as it does at dusk.

And so this is how squirrels make for their own happy new year without even knowing that this is what they are in fact doing. It is what all squirrels have been doing since the beginning of time, since new years first came into being (and perhaps since before we humans came on the scene).

I think I will bury my old bad attitude with the intention of NOT digging it up again in 2009, and concentrate instead on cacheing away the very best of attitude and hope that I can for the challenges in the year ahead.

Happy New Year, squirrels!

Miracle or mishap?

Years from now, no doubt, students at the Meoncross School in the UK will still be talking about the purple squirrel.

So will their teachers.

What appears, in every other way, to be an eastern grey squirrel, has become a semi-regular at the school, and may likely even have a better attendance record than many of the pupils enrolled there. "Pete," as he has been named, showed up during one of the lessons, outside a window, and immediately stole the show from teachers with his bright purple fur.

Purple squirrels, in human-resources parlance, simply do not exist. HR professionals refer to the ideal job candidate as being a "purple squirrel" because they perfectly fit every description of the job being advertised. And as most job-seekers will tell you, that just doesn't happen in the real world. Talents abound everywhere, but no one has it all!

And now, here is Pete, perfectly fitting the description of a squirrel who has miraculously become a Rodent of a Different Color, charming faculty and students alike and, of course, distracting everyone from their lessons.

It's possible he got into some toner, chewed on a bottle of ink or.....fell into some paint. It's possible there is a reasonable explanation for this, and hopefully, for Pete's Sake, not a toxic one.

Or he could be a miracle. Do people still believe in those?

The answer will come during the spring moulting season. Stay tuned, as the fur begins to fly.

A different holiday for squirrels

We're just a few short days away from Christmas but in squirreldom, traditional yuletide greetings take a back seat to mating calls.

Happy Valentine's Day, rodents!

Squirrels are exchanging holiday gifts of a sort right now in the treetops (and on the ground.....and on our deck and anywhere else they can do it), and this passionate mutual generosity doesn't yield any real results for another 45 to 48 days. That's the gestation period, roughly, for the Eastern Gray Squirrel. Beginning sometime in late January or early February and lasting into early spring, the gift wrap will be off and the gift - litters of newborn squirrels - will be revealed.

So forget about leaving out milk and cookies for Santa this year.
Toss out a few choice walnuts for the squirrels instead. They're going to be very busy in the weeks ahead and they'll need the extra energy.

On campus, a study of erratic squirrel behavior

The Hawk, a publication serving students on the campus of St. Josephs' University in Philadelphia, has published this story about squirrels behaving oddly (at least to human eyes) on their campus.

Campus squirrels gone nuts? - Features

The authors of the article quote experts who posit various reasons for the acorn-dropping dude and the trash-can athlete - and some of these reasons are academic - entirely appropriate, I might add, to the campus environment. Who better than a biologist, for instance, could assess squirrels' seemingly misanthropic activities? (And also to point out that squirrels are not an attack species, and will NOT go on the offensive without sufficient real provocation.)

What better environment than a university, an oasis of learning, in which to spin such theories, right?

But has everyone here forgotten that, on many campuses, it is also Finals Week and squirrels, too, must cram for the ultimate exams that will determine their G.P.A. for the semester? (Gray Point Average). Squirrels are cramming mightily at this time of year: Cramming acorns, cramming nuts, cramming leaves, cramming corncobs, cramming whatever they can. Winter is the ultimate final exam and during Finals Week, even squirrels get a wee bit nervous.

So forgive them their transgressions. They're still learning too.