Most people are not that fond of squirrels. They tear up your house. They make annoying noises. Truth be told, I always thought that weird crying noise they make was from a cat. I didn’t figure that out until I was well in my thirties. They really aren’t the animal that you want to be attracting to your house unless you want target practice with a pellet gun. But it is undeniable that they are cute and that is where my family is running into some problems.
My wife has always been terrified of squirrels. Any walk we would take, if she saw one in the trees she would move as far away from it as possible. She’s always had an irrational fear that one would jump on her. Scared it would crawl up her shirt and bite her or get its creepy primate fingers tangled in her hair. This fear has exhibited itself since I have known her, until recently.
Our back deck sits high up in the tree canopy because our house is built into a steep hill. Since we have no real backyard, just a wooded slope, we have taken to tossing any compost out for the woodland creatures to consume. Sometimes half an apple or a dried orange doesn’t make it down and gets stuck on the deck. A few months ago my wife happened to notice that a squirrel was coming to ‘steal’ these poorly aimed remnants of our organic waste.
At first she would watch the squirrel from the window and make a comment about how twitchy they were. They creeped her out. Then, slowly, her heart started to warm to this creature. I don’t know if it is because this particular squirrel was scrawny and appeared to have been in a battle with another animal. Half its tail was missing, its arm was kind of limp, and it seemed to scratch itself a lot. Who knows what it was, but something stirred inside her and she started laying out assorted nuts from an expired bag of ‘premium’ nuts we found in the pantry.
Even though they were expired I was against this because they were my nuts and they were ‘premium’. She went ahead anyway and I watched jealously as the squirrel would take the nuts from the porch, run away and presumably bury them somewhere or eat them. Then the scraggly animal started to realize that every time he took a nut, she would replace them.
The squirrel became comfortable with our deck, unless my son would leave out his shoes, for some reason he was terrified of those. Slowly, he started eating the premium nuts on the deck as far away from the door as possible. My premium nuts. When he would eat all the nuts he would kind of look around and run off. Then my wife started to crack the door ever so slowly when he’d come by. She would throw the nuts out. “I want him to know it is me.” Eventually the squirrel would sit right in front of the door and eat his nuts. My wife on the other side, just through the glass, sitting crisscross applesauce swooning over this little creature. My wife, the rodent equivalent of Jane Goodall.
I should say, this was a little creature, it started to grow. I should also mention that we ran out of the expired nuts long ago. Now the nuts, my nuts, are ultra premium, expensive blends of cashews, pistachio, and almonds. My favorites. None of this run of the mill peanut business for her squirrel. I was allowed none. I got caught sneaking some one time and you would have thought I was taking food from my own childs mouth.
As winter has started to fade into pre-spring, more birds have started to show up. They have started taking note of the nuts. I would have never though a tufted titmouse would have been strong enough to fly away with a whole cashew, but it turns out they can.
Now when my wife puts the nuts out she stands by the door and waits. When a bird flies down she shoos it away. She has started hiding the nuts under our deck furniture in hopes the birds don’t notice it. I have even caught her a few times, looking out the window, staring up at the trees, saying “The birds are staring at me. They’re waiting, but they’re not going to get my squirrel’s nuts. Not today.”
I mentioned to her that the squirrel may not be around much longer because in addition to the song birds flying around we also have a family of redtail hawks that have taken to hunting in our suburban forest. That terrified my wife. So she has taken to keeping an even closer watch on her ‘squirrel baby’. When the hawks start squawking she goes out on the deck in an effort to scare them away. Most people want birds around but she has expressed her desire to get a scarecrow just to scare them off. “The neighbors have bird feeder, why do they need to come over here and eat my squirrel’s nuts?”
When this first started I didn’t expect it to get to this point. I would have believed back then a hawk would have most certainly been the way this squirrel got carried out of this world. Now I’m not so sure a hawk could even pick the thing up. I doubt an eagle could. I heard the crying of a squirrel the other day, the crying I used to think was a cat, but when I looked up I thought it was a cat in the tree. That is how big this thing is now. No, a hawk won’t be the reason this squirrel meets it’s demise. It will be my wife’s fault, because when it jumps to a branch trying to get to our deck it’s eventually going to plummet to the ground or straight through our roof on account of its obesity. My wife will be sad, but at least I’ll get back my premium nuts.
