Our Squirrel

We've been feeding a squirrel. Not, evidently, something you are supposed to do. We can't say we haven't been warned. "They're pests," our friends and neighbors say; just another form of rodentia.

Well, cute rodentia. We have to give them that.

But we have ulterior motives. We have two indoor cats who like to watch the world outside. And if we attract things that move in that outside world, life is more interesting for our cats - and no more threatening to the things-that-move. That's why we have a bird feeder, a wildly blooming fuschia... and a pan of squirrel food underneath our patio table.

Maddie is fascinated. She watches for him by the window on high alert. They seem like they are the same 'thing' - similar size and color except that Maddie has big ears and a skinny tail and the squirrel has little ears and a fat tail.

(When my sister was here Maddie alerted us to the presence of both the squirrel and a large cat in our back yard. My sister thought the cat was stalking the squirrel and that maybe Maddie was 'about to have a traumatic experience' - so we opened the door to yell at the cat, with unexpected results. It was the squirrel who charged the cat, not the other way around! I think the cat was embarrassed; it wandered off, pretending that it didn't see anything. That's the sort of squirrel we have.)

"Critter food" is available from our local grocer. It has corn and grain and peanuts in it. What the squirrel doesn't eat, the jays get. But what the squirrel seems to really LOVE to eat is the peanut part. So in addition to the critter food, we've been buying bags of peanuts in the shell. (Trying to give him a balanced diet, while still attracting him to our feeder.)

And those peanuts have been disappearing as fast as we can get them down. Boy, that squirrel is eating peanuts!

Or so we thought.

We were out in our front garden on Sunday digging holes for some new plants and found a couple of peanuts-in-the-shell under the daffodils.

Hmmmm...

And, while there, we overheard our neighbors talking as they were cleaning out their boat from its winter storage. They were wondering about who had ever been eating peanuts in their boat, and when?

I guess we figured he was OUR squirrel, in OUR back yard and OUR tree and OUR deck. We didn't realize his territory might cover a much larger area, and that he might be a pest to our neighbors too.

Oops.