The Return Of The Squirrels

I had to do it. I really had no choice. The squirrels were beginning to get angry with me. Just look at how furiously this first squirrel's tail is moving. He was not happy at all, and that feeling was focused right at me. And who can blame them? I haven't talked about them in a very long time. I even wrote about the geese yesterday, and barely made any mention of squirrels!

Last year until they all went into hiding for the winter I wrote a post about squirrels at least once a week. Usually many more. We started out as bitter pretend adversaries, but then these feisty little creatures began to warm up to me. We've been friends ever since.

I'm not sure they understand, but it wasn't my fault that I seemed to be neglecting them. It was simply that they had not come back out of hiding from the cold of winter. I was beginning to think that they had gone the way of the geese. But I think they're now out to prove that theory very wrong. They're back... with a vengeance!

I tell you, it seems like every time I turned my camera towards another animal, a squirrel would come up and demand my attention. This wasn't just simply lurking around the edges. No. Once I began taking the pictures a squirrel would come close and start chittering loudly at me as if it was trying to get my attention.

And who was I to say no? Every single time I turned my attention to my little buddies. I was lucky that the other animals seemed to wait so patiently for me. That's something squirrels don't seem to be. Patient! But they know me well enough to know that their impatience works on me every time.

At one point though, there was something bad in the forest. The squirrels had to close ranks and prepare to defend themselves. A hawk was flying through the forest looking for some tasty brown prey. It was after these intelligent little rodents. But the squirrels sounded the alarm and chased it off.

Squirrels might seem like ordinary little rodents to some of you. But I've studied them in action. I know how intelligent they can be. I watched them once gather together to fight off a hawk that came to the forest to hunt them. They fought back as one, attacking the hawk as a group. They even sent one squirrel out as a decoy to lure the hawk down to them.

For those of you who doubt they would do this, I saw it with my own eyes. No exaggeration, no joke. These squirrels acted more like a tribe of humans than just ignorant little forest animals, even including different types of squirrels in the battle. No animal has the same intelligence as humans, but I think we humans sometimes vastly underestimate the intelligence of certain animals.

Squirrels may seem ordinary to some people. And they are definitely pests at times. But they are also some of the most interesting little creatures you could ever find. All you have to do is pay attention to them for a time. I always watch them when I'm in their forest. I probably won't write quite as many posts about them as in years past, but this is definitely the return of the squirrels.