Squirrel Videos!

As if the endless squirrel photos were not enough, now I've got videos too! There were just so many cute things going on right outside of my sliding glass door, and I couldn't help myself.

I recorded the first one to document this crazy little behavior I've seen in these squirrels. I like to refer to each squirrel I see as "Mr. Squirrel", likes it's always the same one. But there are actually quite a few of them coming here. I have seen both males and females, and occasionally I have seen more than one at a time on my balcony, which usually causes one of them to chase the other away. I wish I could tell them that there's no need to be so competitive; I'll leave out plenty of food for everyone. I noticed that these squirrels occasionally start to wildly flap their tails. It looks really funny, and it makes me giggle every time I see it.



I wanted to know the meaning behind this, because I knew that it had to be some sort of squirrel body language. What I found out was pretty interesting:

"The most commonly heard sounds are a sort of "clicking," given when agitated, and what Woods (1980) describes fairly accurately as "a series of rasping whicks." Next time you hear either of these sounds, watch the squirrel. You'll see that not only does its tail flick furiously, but its whole body may also vibrate with agitation. Surely this behaviour gave rise to the slang term "squirrelly" to describe someone acting in an irrational, agitated, or odd manner." (source)

That makes perfect sense, because he was just lounging about on the rail of my balcony like so:



Then, all of the sudden, he started doing the tail thing. I was lucky that I happened to be sitting there watching him with my camera nearby. I guess there was another squirrel approaching, and this little guy was trying to tell him to back off. I didn't hear the clicking noises if he made them, but I was on the other side of the glass so I'm not really sure if I would have been able to hear it anyway.

In the next video, you can see a squirrel using the feeder I made for them. I think it's adorable when they grab it and start chewin' away, which is why I placed the feeder so that it could be easily viewed from the living room.



As you can see, the feeder turned out to be rather sturdy. They yank and tug on it every time they come around, but nothing has fallen apart. Not bad for a handful of bamboo skewers, some string, a few decorative stones, and a dried-up piece of corn amiright?