Admittedly the spider pictures were kind of creepy so here is some counter-programming.
Folks will recall, a little over a month ago, a big chunk of the east coast lost power. That left many of us here at my condo complex to sit around on our front porches and talk. Well, this made a certain mama squirrel a little nervous, as all these people were congregating around the nest she’d made in one of the tall shrubs. In the middle of second day of the black out, I watched this squirrel carry three babies, one at a time, in her mouth to a new nest in a very, very tall tree where chatty humans wouldn’t disturb them.
Well, last Thursday I was happy to see one of these little babies had ventured out of the tall tree and was getting a good start on his squirrel career of digging stuff up and chewing on other stuff. This little critter, which we’ve named NuttMunch hadn’t learned to be wary of other, bigger critters yet. As such, little NuttMunch noticed my cat Scratchy and I was watching and came over to introduce himself.
Frankly, Scratchy seemed to find the whole thing a little unnerving and quickly went back in the house. His brother Itchy was likewise put off by the critter’s forward attitude and avoided him like the plague. Soon, they both had retreated to the safety of the indoors.
NuttMunch then proceeded to follow me wherever I went. This clingy little near-rat also thought it would be fun to catch a ride and climbed up on my shoe. I couldn’t really get the thing off my shoe so I decided to walk him back over to his big tree and see if I could get him to go back up.
After he let go of the shoe I made a run for it, but caught up with him later for the photo shoot. It was then I saw his brother Chet was also up in the tree with him. I haven’t verified that the third baby is up there and doing well.
Rabbits have also become a regular feature of our neighborhood. These things are fun to look at, but there aren’t too many good stories about them. Basically these things run. Fast. The cats used to be intrigued by them, but soon realized that, speed wise, they were way out of the rabbit’s league.
It’s not like I live in the woods or anything. I can walk out my front door and be in any of seven fast food restaurants in less than five minutes. Never the less, we’ve got other furry animals running around here. The possum make frequent appearances and we see the stray raccoon now and then. I even saw a woodchuck recently, running past my patio. None of these showed up for the photo shoot though.
So there you have it. Furry critters giving you more warm fuzzies than icky spiders. If you want to see all the crit pics click here!
I love the squirrel creatures. As kids, Dad would crack open the sliding door to the back porch and let us hand pieces of bread to the neighborhood squirrels. This would continue on until the squirrels started “making deposits” on the back porch with alarming frequency.
But squirrels are cute. Sure, they’re just rats with big furry tails, but so what?
I’m jealous that you got to give one a ride on your shoe. =)
-Augie
I think squirrels are great. They’re amazing athletes. I didn’t know until I moved into this neighborhood, but they can easily scale verticle surfaces and traverse the branches trees as casually as we walk on concrete.
I am unpopular with my neighbors because of my tendancy to feed the squirrels. I even got a cease and desist order from the condo board. They got a letter back from me explaining that I will continue to feed the squirrels as is my right as a free American.
Baby squirrels make me weep uncontrolably.
A little-known fact about Jonah: When he weeps, orange soda squirts out his nose.
My baby niece makes me weep, usually when she grabs my face and pulls out a nose hair with extreme force.
OUCH
Feh. Kids.
-Augie