Squirrel Gone Wild

Another post about squirrels, I know. I'm sorry to those who aren't fired up about them. I have been trying to mix it up a little but I have so much footage of them... bear with me.

One day I heard an insistent, ongoing noise of some kind. I located the direction it was coming from and realized it was a squirrel in a tree, who was NOT happy about a cat that was coming his way. The cat, in usual feline form, was so nonchalant, he looked like he didn't even hear the squirrel, let alone was scared off by it. But whether or not the cat revealed any emotion, it indeed walked on by. At which point, the squirrel directed it's displeasure at ME for filming her too.



Probably much to her continued dismay I got a different angle and continued filming, for my own education. It seems like an eternity to re-watch it but it passed pretty quickly in real time. I quit as quickly as I could when I saw she was not going to calm down.
But I'd never seen one doing this before... Never hear squirrels making much noise, because I haven't lived outside a city apartment building since I was 18. And for all the work I've done with them in the last few years, it hasn't been a time that I've heard them talking to each other or expressing anger. I've seen a little chasing but no vocalizing. In rehabbing I occasionally hear the baby cry for attention or call for mom, and when we introduce juveniles who are new to each other, about 10% of the time you hear a moment's spat until they decide to get along. Watch where this sound comes from in the body, and how the effort to make this sound propelled the body forward, like a little leap. In the first video the tail was twitching, in this one it's not.

I could not believe it when I was walking out of the Rothko Chapel after some kind of mediation meeting there, and I saw a squirrel in a tree actually pulling the newly forming, probably tender and succulent acorns off the branches and having a little snack while balanced within the branches! I whipped out my still camera and took some little movies -- very excited about this first little snippet of footage... He goes to another branch and hopefully you can see his little hands actually grab a pair of acorns, rip them off the branch and clear away the remaining leaves before popping it in his mouth to scurry away. The screen becomes so little on blogger that it might be hard to make out.

As you can see, this was end of Sept or early October, as the branches are still full of leaves. The acorns mature and drop in late October or so; there are many still on the ground everywhere, so it's an extensive Thanksgiving bounty.

And here the little guy pauses at the base of the tree to secure the two nuts in his mouth before heading off with an adorable little hop to bury them....



Sorry about the focus problems... I am always caught with just my little digital still camera and whatever it will capture. Focus in moving pictures is not it's strong point.

I love how thorough they are, little paws covering the thing up with dirt from each side of the hole then patting it down hard with both little paws and all their shoulder muscle put into it... making sure there will be no acorn recession in 2010!!