Squirrels Among The Flowers

How I made peace between my wife, the flowers and the squirrels

Original Story by S. Veigel 08/09/2021

Photos by S. Veigel

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I: I’m now at that age huh?

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t live with cats and/or dogs. By 2009 we started to adopt dogs with physical and emotional issues. Including dogs we knew had aggressive inoperable cancers. By 2020 my wife, Jenny, and I were getting up in our age and we were left with just two dogs. Our beagle named August, who was going on 14 years old and our basset named Millie, who was going on 13 years old.

As you may have guessed, Auggie and Millie passed away in 2020. The house, where four or five dogs were running around all the time, was now so quiet it was unsettling. On the hall coat hooks, once full of doggie coats, Thunder Shirts and leashes, there was just one leash.

Because we had dogs with health issues we had to face holding eleven dogs as they passed away in 7 years. The last 2 dogs passed away just a few months apart and it was suddenly just too much. We had spent $7,000 that year just in veterinarian bills and we were both on a fixed income now. So we decided that we just could not bring another dog into the house. Not just because of the money, we didn’t have the energy. We also felt that we could not guarantee to a dog that we would live long enough to ensure it had a real home.

I sat on the patio lamenting and angry that there would be no more dogs, or even a cat. “I’m now at that age huh?” I’d mutter. I watched the birds and the squirrels coming into the back yard with little interest. “Now all I’ve got are some damn squirrels.”

II: Setting the stage

Because we had dogs running around this house since 2002 (cats before that in this house) we applied a garden strategy early on that was easy to maintain and dog friendly. First of all, instead of flower beds, we planted flowering bushes the dogs could not trample on their way to bark at the fence. Originally all the beds and tree rings had red mulch. Flowers were contained out back in a heavy concrete fountain we converted into a flower pot and out by the front step there was an old iron pot.

Summer or winter the fountain and the iron pot always had blooming flowers in them. In the rest of the yard there were roses, ligustrum, gardenias, camellias, short nandinas, 4 seven foot tall nandinas with red berries, an arbor with jasmine (later mixed in with clematis), a couple of azaleas for a while, 2 river birch trees and 2 hawthorn bushes.

Now, given what I’ve told you, it’s not hard to predict that by October of 2020, following our last dog passing, I would be feeding the squirrels. Our yard strategy seemed to work as well for the squirrels as it did for our dogs. And I was both amused and entertained watching a flying circus every morning. “How can squirrels run down a tree?” I wondered. “Lots of animals have claws to climb up, but squirrels can run down, stop at any point, go sideways, right-side up or up-side down, as if defying the laws of gravity”.

So with that first question my interest became a little research project. I’d look things up and then watch the squirrels to see if I could observe something I had read. Most of the time I found great information. But once in a while I wasn’t so sure that what I read was actually spot on.

III: Squirrels don’t always like “Squirrel Food”

What do you feed a squirrel? Are they herbivores or omnivores? I’ve seen a squirrel eat a flower. But I’ve only seen it twice. I could tell because they’d take a camellia flower over to the tree and pull off the petals to eat the “nutty” center. It was only twice, months apart, and I didn’t really care. The camellia shrubs dropped flowers on the ground all the time. I’d just have to rake them up anyway. Plus camellia shrubs bloom in late winter into early spring when many food sources and other flowers aren’t readily available. And again, in all that time they only ate 2 flowers.

I thought about the perfume smell of a flower and how it must taste. “If you’re hungry enough,” I thought, “You’ll eat anything.”

Keeping those thoughts for another day we started buying “squirrel food”. I’d take a handful of “squirrel food” and create a pile in the dirt near the trees (we did not yet get red mulch back in the gardens). Treating this like I did when I fed 4 or 5 anxious dogs I put a handful in each of 4 separate locations so the squirrels could have some personal space while they were eating.

The separate piles were a great idea. The “squirrel food” not so much. All the squirrel food we found contained lots of bright yellow hard kernel corn. Squirrels can bite some off of what they can hold in their hands but they can’t chew a whole kernel of hard corn. So most of the corn was left in the dirt. And to my surprise, reminiscing about the sight of a scarecrow, even the crows were knocking the hard kernel corn out of the way to get to the seeds.

Complaining to my wife about all of the bright yellow corn I had to scrape up I suggested we get 4 round stones. My pitch was it would be easier to clean up the corn and snow off the stones and 4 round stones would add some character to the garden areas. To that my wife conceded I could get 2 round stones. “Just two!” my wife instructed. “You hear me? Just two.” I came back with three, which hence forth I referred to as “Dinner Plates”.

Days later I learned that my wife had been on her smart phone searching for any squirrel food that did not have corn. This turned out to not be that easy. But when she found it I was both surprised and happy. The product was called “Wagner’s Gourmet Nut N’ Fruit”. When I put it on the new dinner plates (round stones) it was obvious that the squirrels and the birds loved it. And because squirrels like to get up off the ground when they eat they also loved the dinner plates.

And I never had to clean up bright yellow kernels ever again.

Note: Select the pic (above left) for the food mix I came up with to save a little money. I place one cup on each of the round stones in the morning.

Note 2: Please do not hang squirrel feeders on the fence. Squirrels tend to freeze in place when they’re frightened and, on the fence, they are easy prey for hawks.

IV: Buddy

It’s almost impossible to know one squirrel from another or even which one is a male and which is a female from a distance. But I did observe there were slightly different behaviors.

The first squirrel I got to know was in the early winter. I call this one “Buddy”. “Buddy” isn’t really a name exactly. It just got to be my buddy. Buddy was always the first one in the yard and I could tell that once he (assuming it was male) peaked into the yard he was always excited to see food on the dinner plates. After a couple more squirrels showed up they all seemed to get along just fine. But if there was ever any wrestling or chasing Buddy would just sit on the dinner plate eating as if he were saying, “Been there. Done that. Don’t care.”

All through the winter I would go out, bundled up, with a cup of coffee and sit on the patio. Buddy got used to seeing me there. He was the only one that did not run away if I moved, as long as I were on the patio and gave him some space.

I talked to Buddy in a quiet reassuring manner so he’d get to know the sound of my voice. After months of this I would come to notice that he seemed to respond to a couple words. Something in the air or a noise would startle him and he’d jump onto the tree. “It’s ok. It’s ok”, I’d say. “Come on. It’s ok.” Buddy would turn and look at me as I was talking and then come back down to eat.

After a while I observed that Buddy trusted me enough to turn his back to me when he ate. I also noticed he was the one who spent the most time in the yard.

I never had any notion of making pets out of “my squirrels”. I don’t recommend it. I never once expected Buddy to replace my dogs. That wasn’t even possible. The point of the exercise was for them to see me as a non-threatening familiar figure. What I wanted was to just share the yard. So I could see them come in, observe them and so they could be comfortable with my presence.

V: Collision course

My wife and I have been married 47 years now and one thing I know is that she is a kind-hearted soul. But what I did not know was that she had been dreaming of finally planting flowers in the yard for the past 28 years. She likes flowers and plants of various sorts. And this was a really important desire of hers. More important than I had realized.

Spring was now here. My wife picked up her belongings and headed to the garden center. I knew what that meant. It meant that I was going to do some hard digging for a few days. Nothing I wouldn’t do for her, but there was also a very subtle twinge in my mind, as if being on guard about the squirrels. Before it were dogs trampling flowers. How were the squirrels going to act?

Everything went well until my wife wanted one dianthus flower planted behind the arbor. I kept quiet but I knew exactly what was going to happen. Again my doggy sense kicked in. I knew that flower was directly in line with where the squirrels traversed back and forth between dinner plates. I also knew it presented as a curiosity. Something not only new and different, but possibly edible. But I was also certain that if I put out food on the dinner plates before dawn the squirrels would choose the better food.

After all the planting I was extra tired early the next morning before dawn. Knowing my wife would also get up early and would surely wake me I took a nap on the couch. But to my surprise, when I awoke, daylight was shining.  I jumped up suddenly put my shoes on and sleepily stumbled for the door. “What’s wrong?” my wife asked. “The squirrels! I didn’t put the food out!” I responded grabbing the bag and heading out the door. “You were tired. I didn’t want to wake you,” she called after me with no idea why I was so concerned.

To my horror I found exactly what I expected. On the concrete bench were some small yellow flower petals. I found a few more by the tree. The dianthus was fine. It still had flowers but two flowers had been taken. It was just two flowers out of several on that plant but I knew my wife was going to be upset. Though she tolerated, even supported my interest in the squirrels, she thought of them as “little rat creatures”. And now I’d have to confess that two flowers had been plucked.

Jenny was upset. Her 28 year dreams and hard work, she felt, were being threatened. In her mind, I think, those little “rat creatures” were going to destroy everything in the garden. She yelled at me and reached for her smart phone to look up everything she could find about gardening and squirrels. And for the next 2 hours she was going to read to me every negative excerpt she wanted me to fully understand about those “destructive little rats”.

Under the onslaught of bad press I went out and grabbed every dinner plate, cleaned them off and stacked them in the garage. I yelled at Buddy to “Get out!” Buddy actually looked at me with surprise. “Go on! Get out! Go! I said repeatedly as I stepped toward him. Buddy moved a few steps and looked back. Moved a few more steps and looked back. Seriously. It looked like an old movie where someone is chasing away a pet or animal he is attached to for its own good and the animal doesn’t understand why it’s being chased away. And it made me feel bad. Like I was betraying the trust of a friend.

I must have heard every negative post ever presented on the internet during that period. The squirrels get in your house and they’re destructive my wife read on. “Squirrels are aggressive and they probably have rabies”, my wife interjected. They eat flowers, they dig flowers up and disturb the roots of plants. And so on. But with each article she read I became more irritated insisting I had been observing them for months. “You’re not an expert,” my wife corrected. “These are the experts”.

When an animal lets down its guard and starts to trust me that is no small thing. As with my dogs, that was a sacred bond. And now I not only felt that I failed my wife, I failed and betrayed an innocent animal I taught to trust and even depend on me. But the tide was about to turn as my wife read to me a question posted on the web sent to an expert gardener. A lady wrote to the gardening expert that her neighbor was feeding squirrels. And she wanted to know if her neighbor was responsible for attracting the squirrels who were eating her flowers. “I’m afraid she is,” responded the gardening expert.

Suddenly all the images of locust squirrels swarming in from the forests to run across the lawn and attack people was so ludicrous it made me angry. But the thing that kindled outrage in me was the way the expert gardener pointed his finger in no uncertain terms toward the lady’s neighbor in that last article. I could clearly envision the resentment building between the two neighbors. “Now I’m responsible for everyone’s flowers in the neighborhood?!” I questioned with a stern voice. “Yes you are,” my wife concluded.

That was it. I went to the garage, grabbed the round stone dinner plates, placed them back in the garden, grabbed the bag of food and replenished the supply. Then I walked into the kitchen with a calm serious voice and said, “I just have one thing to say.”

“Rule number 1,” I started. “Squirrels have always been here. Even when we had 4 and 5 dogs running around the yard, squirrels have been nesting and raising baby squirrels in the trees over the dog’s heads. The dogs would bust out the door and chase the squirrels up the tree almost every day. They were here before we got here and they will be here long after we’re gone. So we might as well learn something about them.”

“Rule number 2,” I continued. “Squirrels are not related to rats.”

“Rule number 3. Squirrels may eat some flowers but it is not their preferred food. They eat them because they’re hungry. Not because they like them.”

“Rule number 4,” I concluded. “In the rare chance that I might be wrong about something I just said, refer to rule number 1!”

I went out and sat on the patio. My wife was in the house. Both of us trying to sort things out. After a while my wife stepped out onto the patio again with her smart phone, looking to resolve the impasse. She suggested we try some deer repellant. “Some people say it doesn’t really work but this one doesn’t just make things taste bad. It has an odor animals don’t like, so they don’t have to taste it to be repelled”. Understanding how hard she was trying to work with me I responded, “We should try it. You should get some.” And off to the store she went returning with 2 gallons of the deer repellant.

VI: Anyone want 2 gallons of deer repellant?

Let me be clear here. Jenny is a very smart capable lady. When I first got the deer repellant I sprayed some on the flowers. To me it was just about enforcing a choice between the flowers, that weren’t really a desirable food source and the good food I put on the dinner plates. On our shared smart phone calendars my wife scheduled an event every two weeks that read, “Spray Deer Repellant”. I stuck to the schedule a few times then one gallon sat on the tray under my grill until I finally put it in the garage. Eventually I admitted I hadn’t been using the deer repellant.

“They don’t want the flowers,” I explained. “They just want some food.” Having noticed that no flower had been touched in over two months my wife seemed to relax about the whole thing. She even started noticing some things of interest about the squirrels.

And the dianthus that caused such a ruckus? We soon learned there wasn’t enough sun where we planted it. So it was potted and given to my daughter (who also has flowers and feeds the squirrels).

Sometime later I was horrified to see a squirrel sitting with its back to the tree. It was holding something white in its hands and nibbling on it. Fearing it might be a small white flower I froze. Waiting for it to leave so I could inspect the scene. The squirrel finally dropped the white object and moved on. As I approached the scene of the crime I wondered if I were going to have to take back what I said and start spraying deer repellant. But no. It wasn’t a flower at all. It was a grub with its head bit off. Good job guys.

VII: Water Water, where?

As winter gave way into spring I never attracted a hoard of squirrels. For the most part I had three visitors. With Buddy and two others I called them “the trio”. There were also some bird regulars. A pair of mourning doves I called “Mister and Misses dove”, two brown thrashers, a lone dove and a family of five crows. All the other visitors seemed to just be passing through. But almost all of these patrons would remain throughout the summer.

One day I was power washing the fence. I set a sprayer full of power washing soap on the ground near one of the dinner plates. I looked to my left and there was Buddy just a few feet from me. Realizing I was standing near a dinner plate I said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll take a break on the patio and let you eat.” With that I turned and saw another squirrel standing behind Buddy. And as I walked away the two of them stepped up to separate dinner plates and ate.

As I watched Buddy and his tag-along friend eat I first thought that this was exactly the kind of a relationship I wanted to create. I really felt we had made progress. But then, I wondered on this warm dry day, where do they get water? I pictured in my mind the neighborhood and surrounding area. Maybe an air conditioner condensation drip? Surely not a swimming pool. Rain puddles? During periods of no rain? There were ponds in the area about a quarter of a mile away. But that’s a long trip.

After learning that squirrels require 3 tablespoons of water (30 to 60 ml) every day I contemplated adding a stone bowl to the garden. I figured they found water somewhere so I wasn’t in a hurry. But then I walked over to the backyard faucet to turn on the water and stopped dead in my tracks.

Not 4 feet away was a really thirsty dove stretched out, mouth wide open, trying to catch drips of water from one of our rain barrels. So thirsty was this bird, it was willing to risk its life to stay there and catch a few more drips. I folded my arms and stood still. “It’s ok. Get some water,” I said gently. The bird got what it could and slipped into the bushes.

That was it. I retrieved a rod iron dog bowl set with removable legs from the garage, pulled the legs off and staked it over by one of the dinner plates so it wouldn’t frighten the animals if it tipped over. I eventually wanted to put a stone bowl in the garden, but this would work just fine for now. Every morning then when I put food out I dumped the old water in the bowls (sometimes washing the bowls) and refilled the bowls with fresh clean water.

I’m pretty sure the residents appreciated it. One morning I had to put my glasses on to see if what I saw was really happening. A dove was joyously sitting in one bowl, occasionally splashing around in it, while periodically leaning over to drink some water out of the bowl next to it.

Ever feel really thirsty? The desperate feeling relieved as you finally drink some cool water? Ever watch a really thirsty pet drink with their eyes glazed over? Dogs will fight over a food bowl and then share a bowl of water. Just because water is so essential. It just made me feel good every time I watched a bird or a squirrel drink from those bowls.

Note: If you have a bird bath or water bowl you need to keep it cleaned out. !]: So the water doesn’t stagnate and fill with debris and 2]: So mosquitos don’t use the water for hatching their offspring.

VIII: Is that what they really do? Is that what they feel?

I read somewhere that a squirrel twitching its tail means that it is “agitated”. I also read that squirrels are “fiercely territorial” and “aggressive.” I don’t doubt that this is something observed on some level somewhere but what I started to learn is that squirrels could also be very sociable with each other.

Spring of 2021 was about to give way to the hot days of summer. It was mating season and my trio of squirrels became 4 to 6 squirrels at a time. One day I remarked to my daughter I had 6 squirrels and she responded with a friendly air of competition, “I have 15.”

Now, it’s not difficult to observe during mating season a bit of competition but I was suddenly shocked that some of the squirrels coming into the yard seemed very aggressive. Tails were twitching. Squirrels were eating and then all of a sudden one went after another squirrel in a fierce chase across and out of the yard. Sometimes two squirrels were near each other and again there seemed to be a very aggressive fight brewing. So in my mind I couldn’t help wonder if what I read was true. “Aggressive” and “fiercely territorial.”

On a few occasions I saw a squirrel hanging off the side of a tree, or on the fence, screaming as hard as it could in a way that sounded like a little squeaky howl. There were hawks in the area and I wondered if this wasn’t a warning call.

Trying to find information on squirrel mating behavior didn’t soften the idea that they could be aggressive. But then I started observing more than I read.

To mate, I read, the male has to chase the female. When they get tired of running the male catches the female and mates with her. Female squirrels will often mate with more than one male. Squirrels don’t mate for life but a male will nest with a female until the babies are born and then the male gets “kicked out of the nest”.

Once I read these things I still thought it was somewhat aggressive behavior. But then I started to notice some subtleties in behavior. And I started to realize that squirrels aren’t as aggressive as that word might generalize. Nor are they as “fiercely territorial” as one might assume. I also observed that a twitching tail is a lot more than simple “agitation”.

One day I watched as a squirrel cautiously approached another squirrel who was eating. “He” got real close and sniffed the rear of the other squirrel who didn’t appear to be bothered by it. Later a squirrel cautiously approached another face to face. They sniffed each other and went about their business. Much like dogs do. Another day I watched a squirrel scamper part way up a tree to hide from another squirrel. But not out of fear. After a few moments “she” waved her tail out where the other squirrel could see it. Then she ran off a short distance and waited to see if the male was following. A little more chase, then stop and wait, then a little more and off they went.

Another day two squirrels were eating off separate dinner plates. Each by a different tree. Suddenly one ran up a tree and started howling (some say bark). In short order the other ran up the second tree and started howling. And yes, their tails were twitching rapidly to indicate agitation. But not a warning type agitation.

When female squirrels are in heat they act like cats in heat. A female cat starts crouching and yowling. A female squirrel calls to a male with that little squeaky howl or “bark”, as loud as they can. And for a while there seemed to be a competition. One bark answered by another bark like birds calling to each other from different trees.

So no. I don’t think squirrels are fiercely territorial. I saw squirrels who just wanted a few feet of personal space. With the separate dinner plates they appeared to be getting along just fine. They were cautious, sometimes waited their turn for another squirrel to grab some food and run off to bury it before they took some food. Occasionally there was a short chase to insist on more personal space around a particular dinner plate. But fights? No. Just mating chases.

Maybe it was because there was plenty of food and they didn’t have to fight over it. But whatever the reason they seemed to be quite civil about it.

IX: More of a mathematical approach than randomness

It is said that squirrels never find about 10% of the food they bury. This contributes to plants and trees being planted. I didn’t realize it, because I have to do weed control in the garden areas anyway, but some of the little plants in the garden were actually peanuts.

Not to concern anyone. After many months of feeding the squirrels hundreds of peanuts it didn’t take long to catch up pulling the few peanut plants I found once I knew what they were. They’re actually no harder to remove than picking up a stick. But I did want to mention something here about how squirrels bury their food. Because I thought it actually demonstrated organizational reasoning. And, indeed, as I looked into it, it does.

When each squirrel buries food it picks out its own area and landmarks. Each squirrel has a particular area and pattern it likes to use. Sometimes it’s just as simple as burying food near different structures and plants other squirrels don’t seem to be using. But then it is sometimes geometrical. Three hops up, then five hops right or left. Or ten hops up and four hops off in angle left or angle right. They also fake bury food. They pretend to bury something they didn’t really bury, cover the hole and move on. Just in case they’re being watched by other squirrels.

What I liked about watching squirrels burying food is that they like clean hands. I had to laugh when I saw one squirrel dig a hole, deposit some food, cover and then pat the soil down with its hands. But that wasn’t the funny part. As it started to hop away it reached off to the left, grabbed a leaf in the yard, wiped its hands off and tossed the leaf aside like someone using a paper towel.

The most striking example of squirrel strategy I observed was when I was short on my squirrel food shipment for a couple days. Buddy didn’t care about the flowers just because I didn’t put food out. He knew they had been caching food around for a while. And not just food he buried, but also food other squirrels buried.

Like dogs squirrels have a keen sense of smell. It is said that a squirrel can smell buried food under a foot of snow.

As I watched with fascination from the kitchen window Buddy was sprawled close to the ground sniffing out the yard in a straight line east to west. Every once in a while he sat up and ate something then began sniffing again west to east. With each pass he sniffed in a line precisely parallel to the previous pass.

X: Sunny days and Dancing Eddie

After mating season the number of squirrels dwindled to just Buddy and a few other occasional squirrel visitors. It was summer now with temperatures in the 80’s and 90’s (degrees Fahrenheit). There were still a few casual chases and some flirting with the swish of a tail but, again, no hordes of squirrels attracted. No flowers consumed. No plants (new or established) injured by squirrels. And, as was one of my wife’s concerns, no rats. Because, between the birds and the squirrels, the dinner plates were always cleaned up by sunset. And I’d know. Years of dogs (some sick) trained me to go to bed early and wake up by 2 o’clock in the morning. In those early hours I could (can) be found leaning on my grill out back, drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a pipe. If there were a significant amount of rats I’d know it.

One day I went out and sat on the patio I was surprised to see Buddy taking a little respite on a shady tree root. He didn’t stay long but it was kind of nice to know my yard seemed safe enough for a high strung, jumpy little creature to take a nap in the heat of the day. And it just got better.

I looked out the kitchen window on another day and saw Buddy stretched out on the concrete bench. You don’t see that often. Usually you see squirrels hopping around, hunched over eating something or maybe standing up a little. So normally they don’t appear to be very large. But when they can really stretch out and relax it’s often surprising to see how long they really are.

I quietly slipped out again onto the patio and sat down hoping for Buddy to stick around a while. And he did. There were about 7 minutes of me and Buddy hanging out together so I started having a quiet conversation with him, like I used to do with my dogs. The conversation was meaningless and I knew Buddy didn’t understand a word I was saying, but for a brief moment I was engaging with an animal again. Buddy looked directly at me watching me talk completely happy to enjoy a clean bench on which to rest in the shade.

Then my time with Buddy seemed to end. He suddenly got up and jumped off the bench. He went over to a nearby dinner plate and grabbed some food. I thought we were done. But then he jumped back up on the bench, sprawled out and happily nibbled on the food he held in his hands.

Several times Buddy seemed to relax, nibble and then jump up and grab some more food. Several times sprawling on the bench again and then several times sprawling on the shady stones beneath the bench. So my final thought for this story was going to be that, with a little understanding and a touch of kindness, happiness can happen. Or at least that was a final thought, before I met “Dancing Eddie”.

XI: And Finally! Ladies and Gentlemen! The Amazing, Dancing Eddie!

I started video recording this one squirrel because “he” was so wound up and appeared to be over joyed in the yard. He would nibble some food off the dinner plate, drink some water and then run up the 7 foot tall Nandina. In and out, right side up, upside down and crossways with no particular reason other than maybe honing his climbing skills or just having fun. After a few seconds I stopped video recording, thinking I had seen enough, when Eddie got my attention again.

I don’t know why I called him Eddie. He seemed like a wound up kid playing by himself in the back yard and Eddie came to mind. From the tree he raced to the Ligustrum, up and down each branch of each shrub, hopping from shrub to shrub. Racing back over to the trees he jumped and bounced off the trees and then back to the Nandina.

Eddie was on the ground now sniffing under a leaf. I barely caught what was going to happen next. He suddenly jumped up horizontally, tucked his head and rolled forward like a ball out of sight behind the tree. It looked like a Hedge Hog video game.

Surely now I’ve seen everything. After 8 months, what else does a squirrel have to show me at this point? I turned off my camera and went up to my second floor home office to download the most recent pics and video. But I was so wrong. Eddie, little Mr. Show Off, had a special talent I hadn’t seen yet. I’m not sure anyone ever saw it, or would even believe me. But what I’m going to tell you is absolutely true.

My camera was downstairs. I was upstairs. Whenever I leave my upstairs office I always look out the window in the middle bathroom on the second floor to see if there’s any activity in the yard or the neighborhood park behind my house. Eddie was on the concrete bench and my heart sank. I felt faint. I wasn’t video recording from the upstairs window where I could see his feet.

Another squirrel (female?) entered the yard and Eddie hopped off the bench, ran over to her and stood up just a few inches from where she had stopped. With his little hands folded, looking all prim and proper he gave a little swish of his tail. And then he danced. No. Not a big routine. But I could see his feet moving from up above. It was as if he was doing a little run-in-place. Like an awkward little kid trying to impress a girl (was my take). But she didn’t seem impressed and they parted.

It was now August and, since Dancing Eddie, there really didn’t seem to be anything else a squirrel could show me. Everything between my wife, Jenny, the garden, the squirrels, the birds, and life were just routine now. It was interesting. More than I thought. I learned a lot. And I came to realize that there’s a lot more to see. But maybe that’s it. Or is it?

A squirrel came into the yard under the fence. And following right behind it was an eastern box turtle casually strolling in. The squirrel turned around, saw the turtle and ran up the tree not knowing what to think. The turtle went over to the dinner plate and ate some dried fruit. Then it strolled across the fence, stretching its neck to look around and out the other side.

Well. Who knows what’s next.