After shelling its pecan, a contented fox squirrel prepares to eat.
Two years ago to this day, I made my first friend among my neighborhood’s fox squirrels. Most of the others became friends soon after. In this case “friend” means they’ve decided to trust me enough to take nuts from between my fingers, or, in some cases, from a short distance (personalities vary).
For the preceding twenty five years or so, the local squirrels had been substantially made-from, and fueled-by, the contents of my bird feeder. That was fine with me; I wouldn’t want squirrels dumb enough to overlook such an obvious food source (all the neighbors would laugh at the guy with the stupid squirrels). However, I felt very misunderstood when the squirrels (and all the other local critters) fled for their lives every time I showed my face, even to refill the bird feeder and bath.
I spent most of my career on a college campus, peanuts in pocket, ready to feed any squirrel I met. They never complained. (Well, each season’s pups needed some convincing, but that was perfectly understandable.) One would climb the brick wall of a building each day to sit in a second story window and have lunch with a friend and me. From one pair of trees, shortly after sunset, I could call down a large multi-generation family. The old matriarch was always the final one to descend, and did so with an air of grudginly doing me the favor of taking my peanuts, but down she always came.
Even so, my neighborhood squirrels fled on sight, every single day, decade after decade.
After retiring, it occurred to me I might correct that problem. Many months of experimental squirrel bribery were required, but, eventually, sufficiently appealing bribes were found, one squirrel made the connection between bribes and briber, and soon a bit of coaxing had her visiting my back door, rather than risking losing those treats to other squirrels. Happily, she still visits, and I always find her an extra large nut.
Now, I often wake to find a squirrel watching for my stirrings through the bedroom window. The breakfast rush can be intense, so it’s worth some waiting to be ahead of it.
Unexpectedly, having acquired a good reference from the squirrels, the birds reconsidered me, and are now relatively untroubled by my presence. The local flock of blue jays have found me a welcome source of peanuts, a few wrens come seeking nuts (provided I remove the shells for them), and a dove sometimes walks just ahead of me as I go to fill the bird feeder - my self-appointed escort for that all-important task.
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