Pt. 2: What kind of research have I done into squirrels?

Again, I’m going to be a bit long winded in this. Need to start with my college background. I had majored in meteorology in college, earning both a BS and MS in that field. When I started my BS program in 1988, meteorology was the fifth most employable field in the USA behind pharmacists, lawyers, nurses and engineers. I had recruiters trying to get me to intern at their private weather firms outside of Boston after my sophomore year. I didn’t take them up on it as I didn’t have anywhere to stay at a reasonable price down that way. I did do two summers of internships in DC between my junior and senior years and between the BS and MS programs. The NWS at the time was hiring roughly 200 new employees a year to cover both expansion and replace those recruited into the private sector and/or retired. At that same time, this country was only putting out about 200 degrees in meteorology a year. Basically, you were guaranteed a job upon graduation either with the NWS or in the private sector. I was simply buying my time and making myself as marketable as possible for the weather service, which is where I had my eyes set. At that time, they gave preference to those with both a BS and MS over those with just the BS.

After graduate school, I moved home for what I thought would be a temporary period of time. I moved in with my maternal grandmother in the apartment above my folks. I became her live-in caretaker for the last 7 months of her life. At the time, I didn’t realize I had that little time left with her AND I figured I’d only be there for about 6 months as that was the average time back then to file the paperwork, go through the interview process and get assigned to who knows where in the NWS…anywhere they have a station from the lower 48 to Alaska to American Samoa. This was back when you still had to file a paper application with the Feds. Alas, right after I finished the master degree, politics came into play, namely, Contract on America. One of the proposals introduced by one of the new freshman politicians was to eliminate the National Weather Service (NWS). “Why do we need the NWS when we have the Weather Channel?” No, seriously, that’s a direct quote, or pretty close to it. Never mind that without the NWS, there would be no data or forecast models for the Weather Channel and other private firms to use to produce their forecasts. But I’ll stop the political rant there. I’ve ranted before and long on it elsewhere and don’t need to do so here. I only bring all this up, ‘cause it actually plays into my research. In quick summary, when it came to a vote on the house floor, it narrowly lost by 47 votes. A compromise was proposed that passed. It severely slashed the NWS’ budget. The NWS immediately slashed 200 positions from their workforce, which flooded the private sector. “Entry level” jobs vanished. Suddenly, “entry level” jobs required 2 years of non-academic-related weather experience. I had 6 months thanks to those two internships. Not enough. Even the military was flooded with applicants. I know, my resume was returned to me with a form letter with that checked on it: We have too many applicants with your major (check). Good luck on your future endeavors (check). Suddenly, my field went from #5 on the employability list to somewhere below basket weaving.

So, I found myself unable to find work in my field, student loans coming due and no one local willing to give me the time of day, never mind an interview for a “steady” local job because I was “over qualified” with that MS degree. So, I had a lot of idle time while working whatever odd jobs I could find and temp agency jobs (where they don’t care what your background is as long as you are breathing and can show-up where assigned) to make the student loan payments. So, I turned to the backyard and watched the squirrels. More like, studied the squirrels. They became my escape from my then crappy reality that became a bit drearier after Memere (grandmother) passed away, the second of three we’d loose on that side of the family in a 10 week period. Her younger sister wrapped her car around a telephone pole, then a little over 4 weeks later Memere, then nearly 10 weeks to the day of the car accident, her nephew, son of the sister who hit the telephone pole, successfully drank himself to death over the loss of his mother. Like, I said, dreary times.

So, in thanks for entertaining me, I spent what little money I had that didn’t go to loans on treats for the squirrels. Eventually, some of them became semi-tame, enabling me to look at them in much more detail then I’d otherwise get to do. One in particular, I suspect may have been hand-raised and then released into the wild. She was much braver than the others. While others would tolerate me sitting three feet away on the open porch railing while they nibbled on the nuts in shells I got at post-holiday sales, she’d not wait for me to set them out. If I sat still, she’d get on me and dig them out of my jacket pocket. She’d eventually be named Lady.

There were a few others who would nervously come up to my hand, tail over their body/head, wigwagging, sweaty palm prints left on the railing. I observed this and then read about it after some searching on an Internet that was much smaller back then (20 years ago) than it is today. Squirrels only sweat through their palms and only when nervous or scared. Yup, that’s what I saw.

Eventually, they’d either bat the nut out from between my finger and thumb, grab it and run, or they’d gingerly pluck it with their teeth, sometimes missing and nipping my finger or thumb nail, which I’d jerk back quickly, causing them to dart back, but they’d quickly dart towards me again to get the nut before running off with it.

Not Lady. While she’d wigwag her tail at first, she showed she wasn’t as afraid of me as she never left pawprints. She also went one step further than the others the first time I held a nut out for her. She came up to me, put her two forepaws on my thumb and finger. She put her jaws around the walnut and gently pried my fingers away from the nut with her paws. She didn’t take off. No. Lady, apparently, wanted to test me. She tucked that nut down between her back legs while still holding onto my index finger and thumb with her forepaws. She then gave my finger and thumb a thorough sniff and looked up at me and made eye contact. She then let go, tucked the nut in her mouth, looked up at me again, and left. She had brown eyes. I couldn’t believe what had happened. It wasn’t long after that, she’d meet me nearly every morning outside the door to my apartment. She’d be perched on the family’s BBQ grill side tray, looking at me expectantly for her morning treat. Each time, she’d put her paws on my finger and thumb and gently pry them from the nut when she had a good grip on it and then she’d be off.

Squirrels have colored irises, check. But you can’t tell due to their large pupils, unless you’re real close to them and they hold still long enough for you to look. It made me wonder if there was variety in their irises from squirrel to squirrel like among humans.

But that wasn’t all. At the time the folks had an indoor-only calico cat named Mindy. They have an attached “shed” (uninsulated room) at the back of the house that opened onto the porch. Several years earlier, they had installed a screen door to let the summer air circulate through the house. One of Mindy’s favorite spots to nap was right there at the door (latched, of course). One day, I caught Mindy “talking” to Lady. Lady was perched, sprawled out on the BBQ grill, looking down at Mindy. Lady would quietly, chitter down at Mindy in a non-alarming tone. Mindy would do her best to respond. Seriously. On a few occasions, other family members observed the same. So, Lady knew when a predator couldn’t get at her and she wasn’t going to show fear to one in those instances.

Lady proved on a different occasion that she understood cats were predators that I got to observe. A neighborhood cat was getting too close to her offspring. She challenged the cat. She got the cat to chase her as she led it away from the young ones. She suddenly skidded to a halt and leaped straight up, coming down and landing on the chasing cat. She tore into said surprised cat and leaped off. Cat screeched and ran off. I don’t recall ever seeing a cat go near her or her offspring again. So, like many mothers, squirrels will go to great lengths to protect their young.

My one regret was that I had to relocate her. After nearly 3 years of this she was becoming too tame. She started trying to follow me into the apartment hallway where I kept my nut stash. The folks didn’t like that. It also looked like we would be moving by the fall. They had purchased 20 acres of woodland in the next town over and had planned to build on that land. I had scouted the land out in advance since we were out there a lot clearing a couple acres for the house and garden plot. It was mostly second growth, woodland reclaimed former pasture land. If you knew how to read the land, you could find the 100+ year old fallen over, moss-covered cedar rail fencing. There were plenty of oak and maple to provide food. Good water, lots of cover. There were signs of other squirrels, but not so many that there would not be enough food to go around. Satisfied, she’d have a good chance, I trapped her that summer after it was obvious her pups were independent and on their own and I relocated her to the woodlot. I left her all the remaining nuts in shells I had to help her out over the shock of relocation. That was the last I saw of her. Alas, the folks’ plan to build fell through. I wish I had never moved her. I have no idea how well she fared.

She wasn’t the only squirrel I learned from. There was another who came along who was nearly as tame. This one, also female, was a scrappy little thing with half a tail. Whatever predatory had messed with her left her the worse for wear, but she survived the encounter. I called her Hobble. She couldn’t bound along in a straight line nor sit-up easily on her hind paws due to a hip injury. To sit-up, she had to climb a tree, get up on a branch, and prop herself against the trunk. Every time someone in the family saw Hobble, there was a bet as to whether or not we’d see her again. No one thought she’d live long. And every time we’d see her again, all would be amazed. Sometimes, especially in winter, it would be a month or so before anyone spotted her. She finally stopped coming to visit the squirrel feeder three years later. Even crippled squirrels are resilient.

One of Lady’s offspring allowed me to pet him once. He tolerated me gently brushing down the back of his head/neck with two fingers for about five minutes while he dug into the seed bin I had mounted on the porch rail. He had very soft fur. After five minutes, he snapped around at me and missed. I had been watching his body language carefully and pulled my hand away at the first twitch. He glared up at me, made this sort of deep growling chatter, which coming from this little squirrel didn’t sound to intimidating and then went back to eating black oil sunflower seeds.

I was bitten once. My own fault and mistiming. My apartment also had an attached shed. A squirrel had gotten into it and trapped. I had opened a window to encourage it to leave. After a few hours, I checked on it. It had knocked a pain of glass (old windows and the glazing had given it up) in the window at the opposite end of the shed. It had wedged itself between it and the outside storm window. This was an old double-hung window. The squirrel had wedged itself in such a way that I couldn’t open the window to get to the storm window and drop it without crushing the squirrel. But its tail was sticking out of the segment the glass had fallen out of. I put on heavy leather work gloves, touched the base of the tail and saw it flinch, but it couldn’t go anywhere. I gently pulled him out enough to get a gloved hand around his body. He didn’t like that and did the chitter growl thing. I knew I was in dangerous territory. I knew what could possibly happen and knew how strong a squirrel’s jaw can be from observing others break into Brazil nuts like they were peanuts. I pulled him out a bit more, hoping to be able to grab onto the back of his neck and immobilize him. No such luck. Just before I could get a new grip on him, he let go of the window frame and bit onto my gloved thumb and did not release his grip. I was able to get the grip I needed onto the back of his neck to take him over to the other window, where he finally let go of my thumb and took off. Through the trip from one end of the room to the other, he held tight onto that thumb and chitter growled. He had bitten clear through that heavy glove and through the tip of the thumb. Not fun. But I wasn’t worried about any disease or infection at the time. Simply cleaned it up well and obviously, I’m still here.

Between my observations and what I’ve read over the years in books and the Internet:
Eastern Grays live an average of 2 to 3 years in the wild and as much as 12 or so in captivity.
Gestation period is roughly 30 or so days.
Males have nothing to do with raising the young.
Females will fiercely defend their young.
From a stand still, they can leap vertically or horizontally about 3 feet (1 meter).
Never mind what kind of space they can clear with a running head start.
They are very strong for their size and can pull up their entire body by a single claw (imagine a human doing a pull-up by a single fingernail).
As noted already, jaws of steel for their size enabling them to crack through the hardest nut shell (or heavy leather gloves) with ease.
They will tolerate others of their kind in “their” territory depending on the situation.
Their fur coloration is better camouflage then you might think against tree trunks of just about any shade/color. If they don’t want you to see them, and you don’t know how to look/spot them, you’re not going to see them.

Still reading and want to know the rest? Head over to Part 3.