Howdy neighbor! You may have noticed me and my friends running around your yard, fence, trees, roof… just about everywhere. Us squirrels are active during the daytime only, we like to get up at sunrise in the morning to find and hide nuts, take naps during the hottest parts of the day, and then hide more nuts.

If you see me, Phillip, out and about, I may not appear as afraid of you as other squirrels. This is because I grew up with my family. Please don’t take advantage of this to try and catch me or hurt me. While I am used to people, I am still a wild animal. Young kids that move suddenly or make loud noises may spook me. I have really sharp claws that help me climb things, though they work best on trees, they help climb anything really, like bare legs or arms. To open nuts I have nice sharp teeth and occasionally I use them to see if new things I have found are edible. I am pretty sure fingers aren’t edible, but every once in awhile I like to check new ones out with a little nibble.

Food

If you want to try leaving me or my friends some food, my favorite thing in the whole world is pecans. Pecans. Are. Awesome! I like other nuts and vegetables too, like grapes, pumpkin and pumpkin seeds, avocado, pecans, strawberries, pecans… 🙂

I know if you are a gardener you probably hate squirrels like me. Its just really, really hard to pass up easy to get tasty food. It is really like you left it outside for me! If I have plenty of other things to eat and you have made it hard to get to your garden, I will try really hard to leave it alone.

I really shouldn’t have junk food, my parents let me have an occasional piece of a vanilla oreo though. The cream inside is my favorite part. While I like acorns, they can get a fungus that will kill me if they are old or moldy. They also make my pee smell bad. Whats up with that?

Nesting

Since we aren’t nocturnal we don’t have the ability to see in the dark so we like to find good safe spots to spend the night. During the summer we spend the night in trees, but during the winters we will be looking for warm places. These warm places may include your attic, especially if there is an easy way in. While we may damage your house chewing a hole to get in, all we are looking for is a warm place to stay (and maybe have babies). If we had someplace else to stay we would.

A Note From Us

While the above is written as fun and informative from Phillip, we as his parents really want him to survive being a wild squirrel. He still comes home to visit every few days and, having raised him from a baby, we love him. Since we have released him, we have had other squirrels visiting our house for the pecans we leave out. Every squirrel has different characteristics and personalities, from timid to brash or playful. There are older squirrels, teenage squirrels, and young ones just learning how to make it on their own. They communicate to each other with their tails, teeth chattering, noises and other movements. They have as much personality and variation as any cat or dog we have had over the years.

Squirrels become a nuisance when food is hard to find and the weather gets cold. If food becomes scarce they will understandably go to great lengths to get it while trying to survive. The same goes for trying to keep warm in the winter. If you have issues with squirrels at your house be it food or warmth you can try a few things. Squirrel houses are easy to build out of cheap wood from your local home improvement store (we will try to post some plans soon). They can be placed up in trees away from your home. Similarly providing squirrels a food source can keep them from getting desperate. Be careful with the food though, word travels fast and you can end up attracting more of them. We have found the local farmers market has cheap pecans, which are the easiest food source. Ask the people selling pecans for the small ones or the rejects, sometimes you can get a bucket full for super cheap or even free.

On the Road

If you see a squirrel in the road around your neighborhood, don’t go out of your way to hit it. We have seen some callous people on our neighborhood message board say they won’t risk swerving to save a squirrel. If you are on a neighborhood road, going fast enough that slowing down or moving over to give a squirrel the time to bolt out of the way is a risk to your safety, YOU ARE GOING TO FAST. Either that or you aren’t paying enough attention in the first place. The one place you should never speed and should always be paying full attention is when you are driving on a neighborhood road. If you can’t do that for squirrels, you should be doing it for kids and other pets. Go speed on the main roads or highways, squirrels and kids generally avoid those places anyway.