I heard a bus passing this morning and feared that M’s bus was somehow running 10 minutes early, so I rushed to the door.
As I swung it open, I almost hit a squirrel that has been stalking our front door since school started. The startled rodent scurried away to the safety of the tree in our front yard. M and I sat on the steps to await the bus.
Soon we saw the squirrel staring at us from the middle of the road. “Hey, squirrel - get out of the road!” we warned him as a car came up the street and stopped. He ran up the tree again. That’s when I noticed a squirrel running up the road and into a neighbor’s yard. And another one creeping around the other side of my Jeep’s front tire.
“We’re surrounded. It’s a squirrel invasion.”
While two of the squirrels ran around our tree, another pair of squirrels ran out on a limb of a neighbor’s tree which comes very close to our house. One of the two (an especially rust-colored one) jumped on the house while the other one gave us a dirty look, and stared down at us until M’s bus came.
Is this some squirrel holiday I don’t know about?
Posted by James at September 21, 2006 8:10 AMHave you seen the size of the acorns this year? A high mast (acorn production) will lead to a high population of rodents, like squirrels and chipmonks (and mice and so on and so on).
One of the more interesting things I read in "Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn" by Hannah Holmes. This was a great book, and I highly recommend it.
Read more about it here:
http://www.booksite.com/texis/scripts/oop/click_ord/showdetail.html?sid=1624&isbn=1596910917&music=&buyable=0&assoc_id=&spring=
Squirrels celebrate Oktoberfest.
Posted by: briwei at September 21, 2006 1:13 PMyou can't trust them darn squirrels. My wife lifted the lid of the toilet one day and found this staring up at her:
http://home.foliage.com/~jmcgaffi/toilet.jpg
Darn squirrels.
Ugh. That's gross.
Posted by: James at September 21, 2006 4:35 PMya.... My wife wasn't thrilled... Wierd thing was the only way we figured it could've gotten there is if it got onto our roof and went down the vent pipe... I mean the toilet seat was closed... :P
Posted by: Hooligan at September 21, 2006 4:39 PMThanks alot. I'm going to have nightmares now.
Posted by: DG at September 21, 2006 5:52 PMThat's just great. Now I can't use the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Posted by: Maggie at September 22, 2006 7:36 AMThat is not how I would want to start my day either.
But just think how the poor squirrel felt. ;-)
Posted by: Julie at September 22, 2006 9:13 AMWell, it looks drowned, which makes me very sad. But my first reaction would definitely be to scream and possibly have a heart attack. You just don't expect that.
Posted by: Maggie at September 22, 2006 6:49 PMYes it was dead and the scream was pretty loud.
:)
Posted by: Hooligan at September 24, 2006 10:34 AM