Posted on 04/20/2021 3:59:07 PM PDT by SamAdams76
IN 1722, A PET SQUIRREL named Mungo passed away. It was a tragedy: Mungo escaped its confines and met its fate at the teeth of a dog. Benjamin Franklin, friend of the owner, immortalized the squirrel with a tribute.
“Few squirrels were better accomplished, for he had a good education, had traveled far, and seen much of the world.” Franklin wrote, adding, “Thou art fallen by the fangs of wanton, cruel Ranger!”
Mourning a squirrel’s death wasn’t as uncommon as you might think when Franklin wrote Mungo’s eulogy; in the 18th- and 19th centuries, squirrels were fixtures in American homes, especially for children. While colonial Americans kept many types of wild animals as pets, squirrels “were the most popular,” according to Katherine Grier’s Pets in America, being relatively easy to keep.
By the 1700s, a golden era of squirrel ownership was in full swing. Squirrels were sold in markets and found in the homes of wealthy urban families, and portraits of well-to-do children holding a reserved, polite upper-class squirrel attached to a gold chain leash were proudly displayed (some of which are currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Most pet squirrels were American Grey Squirrels, though Red Squirrels and Flying Squirrels also were around, enchanting the country with their devil-may-care attitudes and fluffy bodies.
By the 19th century, a canon of squirrel-care literature emerged for the enthusiast. In the 1851 book Domestic pets: their habits and management, Jane Loudon writes more about squirrels as pets than rabbits, and devotes an entire chapter to the “beautiful little creature, very agile and graceful in its movements.” Squirrels “may be taught to jump from one hand to the other to search for a hidden nut, and it soon knows its name, and the persons who feed it.” Loudin also waxes on their habits, like jumping around a room and peeping out from wooden eaves, writing that “an instance is recorded of no less than seventeen lumps of sugar being found in the cornice of a drawing-room in which a squirrel had been kept, besides innumerable nuts, pieces of biscuit.” Loudon’s advice: when your squirrel is not running around the room, provide it with a tin-lined cage that has a running wheel.
Leisure Hour Monthly, meanwhile, in 1859, advised to feed it “a fig or a date now and then,” and that you should start your squirrel-raising adventure with those procured “directly from the nest, when possible.” The unnamed author’s own pet squirrels, Dick and Peter, had the freedom of his bedroom and plenty of nuts to store away. “Let your pet squirrels crack their own nuts, my young squirrel fanciers,” the author wrote.
While many people captured their pet squirrels from the wild in the 1800s, squirrels were also sold in pet shops, a then-burgeoning industry that today constitutes a $70 billion business. One home manual from 1883, for example, explained that any squirrel could be bought from your local bird breeder. But not unlike some shops today, these pet stores could have dark side; Grier writes that shop owners “faced the possibility that they sold animals to customers who would neglect or abuse them, or that their trade in a particular species could endanger its future in the wild.”
Keeping pet squirrels has a downside for humans too, which eventually became clear: despite their owners’ best attempts at taming them, they’re still wild animals. As time wore on, squirrels were increasingly viewed as pests; by the 1910s squirrels became so despised in California that the state issued a widespread public attack on the once-adored creatures. From the 1920s through the 1970s many states slowly adopted wildlife conservation and exotic pet laws, which prohibited keeping squirrels at home. Today, experts and enthusiasts alike warn that squirrels don’t always make ideal pets, mainly because of their finicky diet, space requirements, and scratchy claws.
None of this, of course, will deter the most determined squirrel owner. Fans of Bob Ross might remember his pet squirrel named Peapod, and some squirrels owners are rekindling the obsession by making their pets Instagram-famous. Still, wild squirrels surely agree—it’s probably best we’re now mostly leaving them to the forest.
I figured out how to get ground squirrels from burrowing under the walkway: I pee into their hole every night.
I also got some pleasure shooting plastic bb’s at some tree squirrels. I counted 21 living in my neighbor’s Redwood tree — I’m sure there were more. Many of them moved elsewhere.
Squirrels know how to move on when they’re unwelcome. I enjoy hearing their warning calls when I walk by. A form of music in its own right.
I saw a video the other day of a family that rescued a baby beaver. Was the cutest danged thing! He liked to build dams inside the house with whatever was handy, and he LOVED to chew on anything wood. Imagine that?
I want one! But unfortunately, my wife would never consider it.
Tree rats.
I met a man who who had a pet beaver. He hand raised it. When he moved he looked for a house close to water. He released the beaver into water. Everyday he went to the area he released the beaver, he would call the animal and feed it by hand! The beaver was very docile.
When I was younger, petting a beaver sounded exciting. Then I got married and after that, not so much anymore. Yet the squirrel is still around and I’m still buying food for the little buggers. Heeheeee!
There are some really cute videos on the dodo youtube channel. People rescue a baby and raise it for release but they want to stay with the family.
Here’s one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk5z3C8MyZ0
What is wrong with me that I don’t like big brown beavers nor your stupid-link band?
When I think of putting Winona and Beavers together I think of perhaps a semi-naked Winona Ryder, in her day.
Ellie Mae was my first thought
“ Is that a bird or an iguana? “
probably
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned native speakers of the German language and squieeels...
When food is at stake, squirrels can become downright persistent to the point they make you stand back and simply admire their gumption.
For me, I don't think they are "smart" in the way that this animal is: Stoffel, the honey badger that can escape from anywhere!, but...they have a degree of single minded purpose that can make me put my hands on my hips.
I have had long battles with squirrels, I even tried trapping them, but, like dipping a bucket in the ocean to empty it, no matter how many you catch and cart away, there is another squirrel waiting in the wings to fill in that hole!
I found a motorized bird feeder that really works: The Yankee Flipper. I put one outside my office window, and in addition to really, really working, it is extremely entertaining. This link shows the whole video I took in super slow motion which I highly recommend, but this is a GIF of what one looked like one day as I got it on film (I can't find the original GIF, but this is one I modified in the year leading up to the election:
But even then, you can see perhaps a method to its madness, where the bird seed is spewing all over the place, so...it just falls off and eats on the ground instead. I found it hard to begrudge him that after he went for the ride! And, when the battery was a little run down, he figured out how to run the weakened battery all the way down. He discovered a way to wedge his body and legs to stop the thing going around even though the motor was on, so the battery would rapidly die and he could eat in peace. When it was fully charged, he couldn't do it, and it was most entertaining to see him repeatedly try!
But best of all is this video by Mark Rober, the guy who did the glitter bomb package for porch thieves. He decided to harness his NASA engineer skills to defeat squirrels, and built an obstacle course. I found it exceedingly fun to watch:
Mark Rober Builds a Squirrel Obstacle Course to foil squirrels!
A squirrel can break a black walnut with it’s powerful jaws. What might it do with your fingers?
Rube Goldberg would have been impressed with that Squirrel Obstacle Course. If that course stayed the same for months at a time, eventually some squirrel would figure it out, probably by taking some kind of short cuts.
I hate too be a complete dick but I love black walnuts in all my cookies and brownies. Having said that, having grown up in Missouri, and picked up and hulled, broke, picked, and ate black walnuts for near 70 years. Those little rats are good competition.
Awe!!!
I have two black walnut trees in my yard, the squirrels make a nightmare of a mess with them, they have even taken them on top of my house to eat them.
Thanks for the picture. It’s wonderful!
That’s a great idea. I’ll give it a shot!
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