I tend to chase off the gray squirrels when they’re acting dominant towards the others. Hey. This is my patio and my birdseed I’m sharing. Play nice or git, and stay off my amaryllis table! There are rules here!
So the two grays I tend to see have just enough of a healthy fear of people, rare for city squirrels around here, instilled by me. Although I’ve laughed a couple of times at one when he’s looked, considered the threat, and then turned his back, as long as I’m still safely inside and away, as if to say, If I can’t see you I can’t be afraid of you. So there.
It is so utterly human a gesture in such a small animal, this obstinate refusal to acknowledge what it doesn’t want to see if it doesn’t have to, that it makes me laugh each time it does it.
Or maybe it’s just on to me. I AM safe for him to be around.
But it also means I can open the door and he will all-out head for the hills looking guilty– while the one black one, now, when I open the door, stays. Trembling, slightly, sometimes, as the slider widens, hoping hard, semi-sure of what is to come.
I spotted my favorite this morning. (I have got to give it a name!) It was up in a tree, watching. I opened the door and held a large walnut piece up in the air.
That little thing scrambled down that tree and ran to the patio at a speed I’ve only ever before seen in a squirrel when it’s having a panic attack. Maybe it didn’t want the others to beat it over to me? The others must have thought it was nuts.
It has picked up quickly on what I want out of it and is completely willing to comply: do not cross this line between concrete sections to come closer to the house. You stay on your side. (I don’t need rodents chewing on my siding, trying to get in, no matter how cute they are like this one is.)
Next thing you know it’ll be trying on little handknitted capelets for me. In bright blue and red with a large S superimposed on another S. Super Squirrel! Mild-mannered Super Squirrel is really…if it can just wrestle this thing on, ’cause that lady isn’t stepping any closer…
…oh wait. We haven’t gotten around to it.
Okay. Re names: it has a circle of lighter, reddish fur around its round, baby-large eyes, giving it an almost Basset hound look. So: Helen Red-Eye? (Nooooo…!) Reddy, short for Reddy-to-run? Red-onkulus? Not sure of the gender yet, it’s not like the grays with their white belly fur.
Redwood, for the tree overhead? I’m sure my red-ers can help me out here.