Celebrating squirrels

I was pleased to see that an article in the Times, celebrating the familiar gray squirrel, was one of the most popular items in the paper. (Photo is borrowed from this blog.)

The article mentioned the squirrel’s kinship with my favorite animal, the woodchuck, as well as its skill as a hoarder: “They’ll gather acorns and other nuts, assess which are in danger of germinating and using up stored nutrients, remove the offending tree embryos with a few quick slices of their incisors, and then cache the sterilized treasure for later consumption, one seed per inch-deep hole.”

Thoreau also paid tribute to the squirrel’s skill with seeds.

January 25, 1856
If you would be convinced how differently armed the squirrel is naturally for dealing with pitch pine cones, just try to get one off with your teeth. He who extracts the seeds from a single closed cone with the aid of a knife will be constrained to confess that the squirrel earns his dinner. It is a rugged customer, and will make your fingers bleed. But the squirrel has the key to this conical and spiny chest of many apartments. He sits on a post, vibrating his tail, and twirls it as a plaything.

But so is a man commonly a locked-up chest to us, to open whom, unless we have the key of sympathy, will make our hearts bleed.

No wonder George Templeton Strong was so fond of his pet squirrel, a melanistic variety of the gray.