I was laying in my hammock a week or two ago, and since I have a lot of bird seed and birds, I also have a lot of squirrels. And I saw two gray squirrels on our far fence of our quarter acre. There was a thin, flexible branch that overhung the top of the fence by perhaps five feet. From that thin branch hung a squirrel, holding on by two of those prehensile rear squirrel feet, and one front one.
The free front squirrel hand was open to the side, and this was a somewhat odd pose, hanging upside down as it was. Then I realized the squirrel below it on the top of the fence was acting odd as well. It was jerking back and forth, running six inches this way at full speed, then turning, and running that way, repeating this, all with its eyes fixed on the dangling squirrel above.
Funny. It didn't hit me as the normal aggressive squirrel competitive and focused interaction when food or territory was at stake. And it didn't look like the horseplay of young squirrels.
Then it hit me, and it all made sense. This is what was going on:
FEMALE SQUIRREL: (hanging upside down from branch which was swishing side to side and bobbing up and down) La La La La La! Here I am! Luscious and beautiful in a squirrel way, and just out of your reach! La La La La La La! Ha ha ha ha ha! And you just can't reach me! La La La La La!
MALE SQUIRREL: (Dashing back and forth, looking up in frustration with her just dangling out of reach, the bobbing branch bringing her closer, then pulling her away just tantalizingly out of reach!) Argh! Agh! Arrrrrrr! ArrrrrrrgggHHHHHHHH! (with a frantic leap of desire and desperation, he coils and leaps with all of his squirrel might and is able to just grab a tip of the dangling branch!) AH HA! AH HAHAHAHAHA!
FEMALE SQUIRREL: (coyly) Ooopsie! Oh my! I am in such great danger! I must run to protect myself from the Gray Beast! (Turns and runs up the tree towards the disorderly clump of leaves near the top of the tree)
MALE SQUIRREL: (hot on her tail panting from the chase) You think you can tease me like that and get away with it, you don't know me! Prepare yourself!
FEMALE SQUIRREL: (her voice as she goes over the edge of the nest and disappears inside) Oh! Oh! You brute! All talk and no action!
Heh, all this took place in the span of perhaps five seconds, and as I watched this curious behavior and recognized it, I realized I had a big grin on my face! (for those disgusted by this act of Anthropomorphism on my part, I understand your outrage...this is just a source of humor to me, seeing it this way, not an actual scientific observation!)>/I>
At some point in my life, I had never been particularly interested in squirrels. I regarded them as un-interesting rodents, bur as I grew older and became interested in watching birds, I ended up watching plenty of squirrels.
I have always been interested in the food chain concept. Where things sit. If you are an earthworm, it is Robins that eat you. A chipmunk? Cats. A Blue Jay? Hawks. Humans? Well...other humans.
And so on. And I always presumed squirrels fit in there with dogs, or hawks or...whatever.
But in my life of watching squrrels, I have only found one skilled predator that consistently gets them, and it isn't hawks. As a matter of fact, I saw a squirrel placidly eating seed from my birdfeeder while it kept its eye on a hawk sitting nearby in a tree. And the hawk kept an idle eye on the squirrel. Each knew the other was there, but neither was interested in either running or swooping.
I had the distinct impression the bird seed was far more important to the squirrel than heeding the risk from a hawk, and the hawk seemed to have the mindset that squirrels, with their unusual squirrel intelligence, strong, prehensile feet, and sharp, aggressive teeth, were better left alone, and other food would soon be along.
And I have seen this same behavior with cats. They don't appear enthusiastic about attacking a full grown squirrel. Dogs are another thing. They go after them with relish, but...with not much success I have ever seen. I suspect dogs enjoy the chase as much as the catch, and that is enough for them.
So, when it comes to squirrels, I suspect hawks prefer them as carrion. I saw this as I came around the curve in a road, and it was unusual enough to make me get out of my car and approach it. (I am respectfully wary, but hawks with animals in their talons are more interested in protecting their meal by covering it with their wings to hide it, or they simply pick up their food and fly away, which this one did.)
I got the impression this was road-carrion, not a fresh hawk-kill>
As opposed to this video of a fresh kill I took, in which a hawk caught a rabbit outside my office, then when I got too close, it decided to take off, and like a B-29 overloaded with bombs and fuel, just managed to clear the ground as it fled, casually replenishing its grip on its prey when it appeared it might slip from its grasp!
I live near a road in a small city called something like "Waverly Oaks Road" and it is here I see the full expression of where in the food chain a squirrel might really exist if we were inclined to eat them more than we do. This road is often disgustingly carpeted with dead squirrels. It is a long, straight stretch of road lined with mature Oak trees, which means...acorns.
If it were humans involved, the desire to go from one side of the road to the other would be inhibited by the presence of mutilated and crushed human corpses plainly visible in the roadway. It plainly did not deter the squirrels from crossing the road, often jumping over the bodies of their fallen comrades as they did. And it was not in the least bit uncommon to see another squirrel added to the scores of carcasses by an oncoming car, the car in front of you, or your own car.
I have developed a theory about this. When God created the Earth, he had only six days to make everything that went into it. That is a lot of work. So, I suspected that he farmed out some of that work to Angels, who were capable, and tasked this one with creating the elephant, that one with creating the Aardvark, and so on. Squirrels came far down the list, and I have often wondered if he had a resource issue, and tasked an Angel named William with creating Squirrels.
The Angel William was a good angel, but...not talented in any way, and had no experience in wildlife creation workflows except for designing rats and cockroaches, but...when you need a body, you need a body. The Angel William might get it right this time. So God contracted Angel William to design and implement The Squirrel. And by and large, Angel William did a pretty good job of it.
Squirrels were fast. They had enough intelligence to improvise. They were athletic and durable. The reproduced prodigiously. But the six-day deadline was fast approaching, and when The Angel William wrote the algorithm to avoid cars, well, he was more interesting in getting the code installed to meet the deadline than he was in doing it right. Besides, he knew the schedule for the appearance of cars was long off in the future, so squirrels could learn what they needed to know in that time frame.
As we know, it didn't work out that way, and when squirrels began dying in great numbers on roadways, it came to the attention of God. He focused on this deficiency, and time and time again, he would see squirrels blindly rush out into oncoming traffic, only to have them appear at his feet a second or two later. This was not good. Then, as he watched, he saw another squirrel dash right between the wheels of a car and improbably appear safely on the other side, and as God's eyebrows rose in astonishment, the squirrel reversed course and ran right back under the wheels of the trailing car, and suddenly appeared at his feet, where it scurried away to the nearest heavenly tree.
God didn't explode in anger, as that was not his style, but he did ask calmly "Okay. Who designed The Squirrel?"
An Angel with a clipboard says "It was Angel William, my Lord."
I have often wondered if, when observing this earth in action, that God delivered unto himself a facepalm. If he ever did, it must have been then.