No one would say that squirrels are intellectual or wise.
But they must know something because they have altered what we recall as
previous behavior. We have had several
years where acorn production was amazing, where there were areas where we
simply walked on a carpet of acorns but this last fall was not that outstanding
in acorn production. Nevertheless, for
the first time in our recent memories, the squirrels seem to have planted every
acorn they could get their little paws on, because we have so far found hundreds
of new little oak trees sprouting up everywhere.
We have pulled up little oaks in flower beds, mowed them in
the lawn, and found them sprouting up even in the potted plants that summer
outside but which winter inside our garden room. We laugh that if we stopped pulling up the
little sprouts, we would very quickly be living in an entire oak grove.
Aside from all that, our resident squirrel, who we have
named Sid, seems to have lost all fear or inhibition when we are around. He boldly comes to glean fallen bird seed
from the bird feeder. He cannot access
the bird feeder, but there’s all those lovely bits the messy birds drop. The other day we were sitting on the patio,
looked down, and there was Sid, apparently eavesdropping on our conversation.
So what with all this unusually intensive planting of acorns
and this lack of caution around us, we cannot help but ask, “What do squirrels
know?”
