Squirrel L'Amour

January may be a cold month, but things are heating up in the trees out my window. The squirrels that overrun my yard are insuring that they will do so in perpetuity. I have always noticed that January was a busy season of “boy meets girl” in the bushy-tailed world of Gray Squirrels, and this year is no exception. Except, perhaps because their numbers seem to be ever increasing, (where is a good top predator when you need one), there seems to be no direction I can avert my eyes to that doesn’t showcase some chase scene going on.

And what a gymnastic event this chase is. The female shoots up one tree, leaps to another, twirls around the trunk, then up another tree. It seems she is acting out a saying my father-in-law always quoted, “Go to the round barn Mable, they can’t corner you there”. Well it’s equally hard to corner a female squirrel on a round trunk. She is usually pursued by two to three males, yet still seems to outwit them. I watched as she led her merry chase out to the thinnest of branches, one that she must have calculated could hold only one squirrel, and indeed they stopped. They must be hardwired to do an internal formula of mass ratio to branch width in seconds for otherwise there would have been a rain of squirrels falling out of that tree.

There is a time though, when she does choose, and then it’s the “busy myself in the kitchen time”, but I also have noticed that there seems to be a “joi de vivre” that follows with playful leaps and tumbles on the ground. I have seen it before, you may have too, a squirrel who looks to be in the midst of an epileptic fit, but this time, I was able to see that this leaping about followed mating, so maybe it wasn’t epilepsy after all! Time then to be ready to put out more seed, to feed more mouths, even though technically I am supposedly NOT feeding the squirrels. By my husband’s orders. Ah, but so many birds are ground feeders, I can’t not spread seed for them. And so it goes, a steady source of food, a willing chase and soon more fluffy tailed rodents will be on the premises.


Just a few facts about the little dears that will soon be here, well, in 45 days or so, will be here. The books claim that squirrels have two broods a year, which I would say has increased to at least three a year in my yard, due, I believe, to such a reliable food source. They only have 2-4 in a brood with each female raising an average of 6 a year.


They also claim there are more females generally then males for males leave the nest looking for adventure sooner than the females and often find it. Ending what might otherwise have been a stellar squirrel career. For that matter, they give a rather grim statistic that only 1% of them live out their allotted 5 years with some 70% being killed off in their first year. Quick, start a government program. Yet, they remain one of the most prolific and wide spread mammals on the continent so perhaps government subsidies are not in order.

You, of course, have seen their nests, drays they are called, leafy arrangements fairly high up in the tree. The summer home is light and airy whereas this winter dray will have an insulating layer, 5-7” thick comprised of moss and fur and feathers and whatever warm insulating bark they can find. We have red cedars locally and the bark is often stripped off to make such linings, for bird’s nest and squirrel drays. I saw the female gathering leaves in her mouth yesterday and bounding off to enlarge the nest. She does all the rearing too, and will chase off any male who ventures to give an opinion.

So, chickadees, as we mentioned the other day, are giving their territorial calls and squirrels are mating. Even though the winds are howling and snow is blowing, spring, or some image of it, comes to mind. Now to put out some more food while my husband shovels. Pregnant mothers must be cared for, mustn’t they?