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.

Underwear...under WHERE?

First comes the bad news that pretty much shook up the Squirrel Economy.


There is, apparently, an acorn shortage here in the U.S., stretching from the state of Virginia to points south. Trees just didn't seem to have produced sufficiently this year for the squirrel population and news accounts are reporting how wildlife advocates have been encouraging people to supplement nuts and other food where they can. This is important. Because without nuts or acorns, of course, squirrel unemployment rises rapidly - with nothing to bury, our country is besieged by increasing numbers of out-of-work squirrels.

So while we humans have it bad on Wall Street, squirrels are taking a dive on Acorn Lane.

Then, suddenly, comes a burst of good news: Squirrels, even those that are acorn-challenged, needn't suffer nakedness any longer. Squirrel underwear - known in the United Kingdom as Y-fronts - is now available!

Let the good news be shouted from the acorn-less treetops! Perhaps the availability of a comfortable cotton garment, just as winter starts to clench its icy grip, will be of some comfort during these trying times.

Indeed, perhaps we humans, struggling with a tragically faltering global economy, might also seek comfort in nice, new comfy cotton underwear. Wouldn't it be nice if that's all it took in this world?

It would certainly provide some warmth where it counts most.

Home for the holidays

He is a fat squirrel, but that's nothing new for our yard.

He is also "the tilted squirrel," which is what we call him when we see him - which is quite often - because he is the only one who walks in a kind of sideways fashion, with his head pressing up against an imaginary wall.

His balance is fine, however, and he can scrap with the best and the rest of them when it comes to claiming our tossed pecans and almonds as his own. He runs, he buries, he chatters and he is as able-bodied as he can be under the circumstances. I admire his grace and his spirit.

So it was particularly gratifying to discover, on Thanksgiving Day, where he is living: He has made his home nest in the tallest tree in our yard, the sycamore tree, which hosts one of several wooden nestboxes we have installed on our property. I have seen him sitting atop it, sunning himself, at times, and once or twice have spied his face peering out in inclement weather, as if he were waiting for the green light from some unseen squirrel meteorologist.

I love that he is there, that he has a home, and that he does not have to go far (except to the base of the tree and, of course, our deck) to get what he needs in life. We will happily provide for him during this tough season when "plenty" is hard to come by.

The Tilted Squirrel is home for the holidays - and the home in this case happens to be our home.

What a privilege that is.

It's criminal that this is criminal!

Caught grey-handed!

A Canadian friend of wildlife, visiting an upscale city park in Montreal, has been fined for feeding squirrels. Bruce Kert is now a marked man, according to this story in the Westmount Examiner. He is branded a criminal for having consorted in a culinary fashion with rodents.

The city, you see, has Zero Tolerance for such nefarious activity. He brazenly brandished peanuts - or so the charges claim - and willfully fed the aforementioned urban vermin. Cuteness factor notwithstanding, he is charged with doing a bad, bad thing.

Presumably the city could probably make good use of the $455 worth of fines levied against in the insouciant Kert. (It's not likely they'll spend it on food for wildlife or even to cover the municipal vet bill, should one exist at all).

Presumably Kert may become sufficiently traumatized by this to subsequently develop a peanut allergy. He fed only two peanuts, according to the city, but at roughly $227 per nut, that isn't exactly.....uh, peanuts.

"It's not like I make a habit of it," the story quotes Kert as saying in his defense.

It's not likely he'll ever do it again, either. Squirrels, you see, are considered a nuisance.

Public Security Officers who stop and issue tickets to people enjoying the municipal park, however, are not.

What's wrong with this picture?

It's nuts.

Leaving their mark

There is a small scar on the left side of my upper lip that I've had for the past year and a half. It's not something to laugh at but I suppose the way I got it is somewhat comical, mainly because it's the worst injury I sustained in an incident that could have ended more seriously.

I was rushing to the back door to hand a nut to a squirrel who was standing there, staring in.

Let me repeat that: I was rushing to the back door to feed a squirrel.

And I do mean rushing. Rushing so fast and so carelessly that I hooked my leg on the leg of our dining room table and went crashing down, face first, on our ceramic tile floor. I did not even have time to try to break my fall with either of my arms - and perhaps that is a good thing. I at least must have turned my head to the right, somehow doing the right thing, before I hit the floor which soon became splattered with blood, as if a crime scene had occurred.

Yes, even with a Jackson Pollock style outpouring of vital fluids on our beautiful tile, I continued to crawl to the door, nut in hand, and yes, I fed the squirrel (who, by the way, was still waiting there, quite unsympathetically.)

Crazy? Perhaps. But nothing more horrible had happened - and after a trip to the ER to get my seriously split lip stitched back together by a plastic surgeon, I was on my way.

That squirrel, by the way, had been a personal favorite of mine for two years at least. He was a sassy male, a very in-your-face kind of guy, and when he migrated to another territory three months later, I missed him terribly.

I still do.

These animals come and go in all our lives, don't they? When I see the scar on my lip, I think of him. But most of the marks they have left on my life are less visible (I'm grateful for that).

But they are there. Most definitely, they do remain.

A classless act

Shame on the BBC. And shame on their wildlife show, "Autumnwatch," for broadcasting images of the corpse of a squirrel that had been electrocuted outside the garden shed of Bill Oddie, the show's presenter. The squirrel died after gnawing on electrical wire outside Oddie's North London home.

Yes, this stuff happens. Squirrels gnaw, they get electrocuted, they die horrible deaths. The newspapers are filled with stories about how towns, parts of cities, and other jurisdictions lose power because of squirrels gnawing electrical lines. A squirrel once shut down part of the New York Stock Exchange this way. A squirrel once shut down part of the massive Metro North train system, between Manhattan and Westchester County, in just this way.

And yes, in each case, the squirrel died.

The image would have been disturbing enough but Oddie could not leave well enough alone. He then is quoted as saying to viewers: ‘Better red than dead . . . or grey.’ He subsequently added: ‘Let all squirrels watching be warned, because you can get too cocky.’

I suppose he fancies himself a wit, having said all that. I suppose he thinks he is terribly clever.

I hope the BBC takes a good hard look at him and his show - which is immensely popular among TV viewers in the UK. Any host of a show who can take delight in, or see something amusing, in this kind of death - in ANY kind of unnecessary death of an animal - might need to have his appropriateness (or lack thereof) re-evaluated.

I hope the BBC pulls the plug on Oddie. No doubt he would still feel some kind of shock - but fear not, Oddie fans, it will only stun him a wee bit.

3 squirrels, 3 wishes

It turned dark around 5 p.m. today and a light rain had already begun to fall, growing more steady with the minutes.

They're out there now, and survival is up to them.

Three little sisters, young orphaned squirrels, who were brought to us in September, have grown so increasingly wild over time I knew it would be unwise to try and overwinter them. We weren't just racing the clock now but the seasons: today was the day they had to be set free.

Ideally you want a day with moderate temperatures, which we had, but a forecast of dry weather is usually best. We released early - got them into the woods by 9 a.m. - because anything less than 7 or 8 hours of daylight for nest-building and checking out the surroundings is simply not sufficient.

Last night they were warm in a nestbox and they could have been kept safe forever, if only I had the time and the space, and if only they were not the wild creatures that nature intended them to be.

So we went forward into the woods this morning together, and their departure was swift and joyful. My wishes for them, then, are for a swift acclimation to their new and natural home, a joyful existence there, and all the safety that nature and their own wits can grant them.

Double the luck

The good news out of Texas, as reported by the Dallas Morning News, is that the University of North Texas is doubly blessed this week. Since 2002 the campus has been graced by at least one albino squirrel, a fact of life the students take as seriously as their final exams.

But this week they discovered a second one - perhaps an offspring of the first? And campus denizens couldn't be any happier as if the football team had scored a shutout in the homecoming game.

No, for sure, this kind of event is an even more joyous one because, in the paws of a rare squirrel such as these two, every single acorn is guaranteed to score a touchdown!

Here's the story:

For the first time in the history of the University of North Texas, two albino squirrels have taken residence near the intersection of Avenue A and Eagle Drive.
UNT faculty and students alike have honored the albino squirrel since the first was discovered on campus in 2002. Some students believe they will receive a passing grade if they see one of the white creatures on their way to a midterm or final exam.
It’s unusual for UNT to have two albino squirrels together, said Melody Kelly, associate dean of the UNT Libraries and an albino squirrel enthusiast.
The discovery of Baby’s Baby and his unnamed white-haired juvenile friend was confirmed earlier this month when the two were photographed by K.T. Shiue, a computer support specialist and webmaster at the university.
The university is taking suggestions for the new squirrel’s name