Tree Squirrel: Good, Bad and Unpredictable
Our first introduction to the adorable squirrel was at the kitchen door. I had just built a simple wood handrail on the back landing, and she apparently thought I had put it there expressly for her. It was very handy since it began right next to a big tree. She could hop on the railing and follow it to the kitchen door. There she could lean out and look around the door frame and peer at us in the kitchen. All we could see was this little pointed head and two tiny ears. Well, hello.
That was the same day we spotted a squirrel pillaging those delicious little strawberries called fraise du bois and some nearly ripe ‘Anna’ apples. It took awhile before we realized that these remarkably different creatures--one nice and the other naughty--were actually one and the same squirrel.
You’ve heard of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Meet Dr. Squirrel and Mrs. Rodent--the Eastern red fox tree squirrel with the split personality that lives in our yard.
Don’t confuse bushy-tailed tree squirrels, which run up trees when frightened, with the scrawny ground squirrels, which dive underground. Ground squirrels are often in the news because they carry diseases and can be a health risk. Tree squirrels may be pesky, but they are not a danger or health risk.
But tree squirrels do annoy--and even scare--some people with their antics. On her good days, Dr. Squirrel is a well-behaved creature that scampers merrily across the lawn and takes peanuts from my hand so gently and so carefully, making sure the peanut is not a finger (peanuts and fingers do look a lot alike).
It is not a good idea to teach squirrels or any wild animal to eat from your hands. They can bite hard, as my oldest son once found out when he was trying to train a different squirrel to eat from his hand. But someone else trained the amazing Dr. Squirrel, and trained her well, though I suppose she could be a stunt squirrel that escaped from nearby 20th Century Fox.
She can do some amazing stunts, such as fishing out peanuts from my front pocket while hanging upside down. I discovered quite by accident that she knew about shirt pockets and what they might contain.
This squirrel will sit on my arm with her head in my shirt pocket as if it were a feed bag. After she grabs a peanut, she looks me right in the eye, as if to make sure I won’t object, then fearlessly climbs onto my shoulder and finishes off the nut.
If my arm is not positioned correctly, she simply hangs from my shoulder by her back feet and drops headfirst into my pocket, her fluffy tail going up my nose. “What a clever squirrel!” I say.
But this very squirrel can be quite annoying--the very definition of “varmint.” I’ve seen Mrs. Rodent grab onto a too-curious cat and give it a nasty bite. My cats are actually scared of the squirrel.
She finds it amusing to chew loudly on the rooftop furnace vent, so that the sound echoes throughout the house. She thinks it’s funny to drop like a fur bomb into a hanging pot of impatiens, snapping off the crisp stems. She’s the one who digs up the potting soil, looking for nuts hidden by the scrub jay.
For a number of years, we had a bright blue scrub jay that wouldn’t put up with this nonsense and chased squirrels from our garden, squawking at them the whole way down the street. But that jay moved on, and the new jay is not so protective, despite regular bribes of peanuts.
It’s a peanut economy in our backyard--whole, unsalted and unroasted peanuts passing as currency. They are begged, borrowed, stashed away and stolen. We give nuts to the jay, which consumes a few and buries the rest. The squirrel comes along and digs them up. She eats some and buries the rest. I complete this economic loop, since I find the nuts as I garden and give them back to the waiting jay.
I must say, both animals are expert nut hiders. The jay pounds nuts into the ground with her beak, then picks up dried leaves and neatly covers the hole. The squirrel digs holes at warp speed, tossing dirt everywhere, but then she pushes it back in and pats it down with her paws, completely covering the nut. She looks like a gardener firming the soil around some new bedding plant, but this lightweight has to put her whole body weight behind each pat.
And the places they pick to hide nuts! Who would think to look in a flowerpot or in a rain gutter?
It can be said of the nefarious Mrs. Rodent that her nose is remarkable, and not simply for the way it wiggles. She finds peanuts by sniffing and can smell one in the next yard. We know because once while trying to get rid of her, we threw some peanuts over the back fence. She stood there on her hind legs, weaving back and forth--nose working a mile a minute--until she smelled those peanuts on the other side of the block wall. Over she went and was back in just seconds sitting on top of the wall with one of the peanuts, somehow finding it in the neighbor’s ivy. I was impressed.
Still, Mrs. Rodent can be a real pest, and there’s not much that can be done about it. Whole books have been written on the subject. “Squirrel Wars” (Willow Creek; $14.95) is only the latest to chronicle “backyard wildlife battles.”
The cover says it tells “how to win,” but I only found ways to keep them out of bird feeders. The only gardener I know who has won this war did so by building a giant metal cage around his prized apricot tree to protect the fruit.
Repellents seldom work, and because squirrels and people have similar tastes, it’s self-defeating to cover fruit with distasteful products such as pepper sprays. Those sometimes work when you’re trying to keep flowers safe from various creatures, but squirrels aren’t all that fond of flowers, though they do relish the tightly closed buds of Iceland poppies.
Despite her dual personality, we’re quite fond of our Dr. Squirrel, though at the moment we are squirrel-less. We assume she is nesting and rearing her young, and we hope she’ll be back soon. We’ll keep the peanut jar full.
Write to Robert Smaus, SoCal Living, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90053; fax to (213) 237-4712; or e-mail robert.smaus@latimes.com.
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Squirrel facts in a nutshell * In Los Angeles County there are two kinds of tree squirrels. The native gray squirrels (Sciurus griseus) are quite bushy in appearance and gray in color with no rust coloration. They primarily eat and hoard acorns. Eastern red fox squirrels (Sciurus niger), which are gray-brown with a rusty glow, were introduced to the area (when is unclear). The Eastern fox squirrel “is a gourmet,” according to one reference, eating a variety of seeds, nuts and fruit.
* Both species nest in trees--in cavities or piles of twigs about 30 feet above the ground. They bear two litters of three to five young annually, in late winter and in late summer.
* Both can live as long as 15 years.
* Though ground squirrels often carry serious diseases and are a public health concern, tree squirrels seldom host diseases because they do not live in holes underground, where disease breeds because of close quarters. That makes them less likely carriers of disease.
Source: Los Angeles County agricultural commissioner’s office and Department of Animal Services.
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Who done it? Because their activities and antics are so visible during the day, squirrels often get blamed for bad deeds by other creatures, which often prowl at night when the squirrels are fast asleep.
Squirrels do not tunnel or dig extensively, but they do make small holes in plant pots and in the garden to bury or uncover nuts. They do not eat leaves, but they nibble on avocados, some deciduous fruits such as apples and apricots, tomatoes, strawberries and, of course, nuts and birdseed. They will peel and eat several kinds of citrus.
Raccoons and skunks are the primary diggers in the garden and usually are looking for grubs in lawns, flower beds and pots. Opossums do some digging but seldom cause serious damage to the garden, and they actually eat snails, so they could be considered helpful. All three are nocturnal.
Day or night, cats and dogs may be the most destructive diggers and especially like to dig in freshly cultivated soil.
During the day, birds of various kinds eat holes in fruit and consume seed or even small seedlings.
If the perpetrator cannot be found during daylight hours, suspects could be nocturnal snails, cutworms and other larva that may hide in the soil by day.
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Squirrels and the Law
Tree squirrels, like deer, are classified as game mammals by the California Fish and Game Code and can be taken only by following hunting regulations. Although the squirrels can be hunted in designated areas, the native gray tree squirrel is protected in most urban areas.
Eastern fox tree squirrels found to be damaging crops or property may be trapped by the property’s owner or tenant, with modified lethal box traps used for gophers.
In the city of Los Angeles, the Department of Animal Services claims jurisdiction over squirrels. You can rent a humane trap from a city animal shelter. When a captured animal is brought to the shelter, the city relocates the critter.
State and local law prohibits the poisoning of squirrels.
