A New Squirrel Comes to Visit
June 16, 2003

There has been a second squirrel on our third floor balcony in Pasadena recently. We think he is the son of our usual squirrel. He is young and relatively small, with an as yet scrawny tail. Very noisy, He is forever knocking things over and digging in our plants. Bad squirrel. His mother(?) was there too one day, but he was rude to her (hissed at her, and she left). She nevertheless seems to have generously given this territory to him, as we have not seen her recently.

He seemed to be having trouble jumping down from the balcony walls or fence to the balcony floor. We would put some nuts on the wall and he would take those right away. He was so hesitant to jump down. At first we thought he was just too small. But there may have been another factor.

We realized this morning that he was afraid of the nutcracker and bowl where we usually keep the squirrel nuts. This was a gift from our friend Kerry. It is a cast iron nutcracker in the shape of a squirrel, which we and our old squirrel though quite appropriate. You can see it on the floor in the photos below. Can you see our new squirrel too?

Squirrel must have spent half an hour this morning circling around the iron squirrel, who, as you can see, had all the nuts!

He fluffed up his scrawny tail as much as he could, trying to look bigger, as he danced around iron squirrel.

He is a courageous and brave squirrel.

Go for it!

Now they are friends.