Although the gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinenesis) that I’m feeding have failed to nest on my windowsill, they regularly visit me, and I leave them a buffet of peanuts and sunflower seeds several times per day. There are two animals, I believe of opposite sex.
Their behavior is invariant in some ways. They always take the peanuts first, usually running away with them, almost certainly to hide or bury them. Then they return and eat the sunflower seeds on the spot, at a rate of about 3 seconds/seed. Occasionally, as in the picture below (taken this morning), they’ll eat a peanut on the spot, but they always discard the red, papery coating around the nut.
This one is a female, as you can tell by her swollen teats. I’m a bit worried about her apparent loss of fur, and hope it isn’t something like mange.
They have learned two new behaviors. The first is to take more than one peanut in their mouth at a time when absconding with them. After seeing them learn how to hold two nuts, I’ve observed them putting three in their little mouths, though that’s hard to do. They don’t have cheek pouches.
Too, the female has learned to scratch on the windowsill of my office to get food. I don’t feed them on my office windowsill, since I can’t open the window, but leave the food on the windowsill in the lab. Nevertheless, the female will, several times a day, lie on her belly on my office windowsill and scratch vigorously at my screen, making an ungodly racket. (It took me a while to discover what the noise was.) She has learned to do this only on the single windowsill by my desk, as she used to scratch at the other two windows in my office.
When she does this, I walk into the lab and put out more peanuts and sunflower seeds. Often she scampers there to meet me, even though it’s only a ten-second walk.
Don’t underestimate the intelligence of rodents, particularly ones that are hungry!
The amount of hair that my cat sheds in spring would stuff a 3 section sofa.
Do you think she’s doing the same thing, just a normal seasonal molting thing?
Ah, the clever squirrel has trained the human! 🙂
Windowsill Squirrel vs “window-silly” human – no contest.
She has you well trained!
It is mange. Endemic in squirrels. At least the temperatures are not in the deep freeze, and squirrels without fur can suffer frostbite. For several years (until she disappeared) I fed a female squirrel who had the softest touch when she took the nuts from my hand, and I always felt I was helping feed her family.
If you can catch her, rubbing the infected spots (or all of her) with used motor oil. I never checked why this works, but I have seen it save at least 4 dogs. You might need to give her a good bath once the mange is gone so her mate and other squirrels don’t reject her. (wear gloves and other protective clothing to mitigate as much of the human smell as possible. Squirrels will tolerate crank case oil a lot easier than human smell.
Cute story. Thanks for sharing it! In Germany, the red squirrels are very common. We used to have them behind the house. They knew when they could snitch from the sunday table. Typically they were plundering the seeds meant for the birds. I don’t remember them coming up with such ‘elaborate’ behavior to get food as yours. Aside, there is an old german proverb: “the devil is a squirrel” perhaps due to their bright red fur, uncanny dexterity and jagged motions.
Unfortunately, the Grey Squirrel (similar to yours) has been introduced to England where it has largely replaced the native red one. It seems to be “fitter” than the smaller Red Squirrel. Luckily, the Grey ones haven’t gotten here.
For those interested, Google/YouTube “Eichhörnchen”
I use to feed the squirrels around my house. They developed the habit of climbing the outside of the sliding screen door to peer into the house. To discourage them from climbing, I would slap the window pane on the inside and not reward them. After a while, they would stand on their hind legs and wait until I open the door. I also fed them grapes. They would peel off the skin and eat the flesh.
The many patented whirl-a-squirrel devices would seem to attest to that. My family tends more towards feeding the birds than squirrels, but for all intents and purposes, if you do the former you have to admit/accept that you are also doing the latter.
My mother generously fed the local squirrel populace a 25lb box of walnuts each week. (The cat considered them my mother’s outside pets and found them amusing to watch.) She called me at work one Friday afternoon to say the cat had invited two squirrels into the house. (“Yeah, right,” I thought.)
But the next morning, while sitting in the living room, I heard my mother say “It’s OK, you can go in.” Looked down the hall and saw my mother holding the screen door open and two squirrels strolling down the hallway, followed by the cat. (I discouraged future incursions.)
I have trained squirrels on the University of Oklahoma campus to come when I call them with a ‘phishing’ sound to be fed. Sometimes they apparently recognize me when I am not calling them and follow me for food. I feed them pecans. When fed shelled nuts, they eat them immediately, but about 90% of the time when fed whole pecans, they rush off to bury them.
So they seem to “know” that in-shell nuts will keep, while shelled ones won’t. Sounds adaptive to me. 😉
I got a female rock squirrel tamed down to sit on my knee and eat shelled pecan halves. Once she gently bit my finger. She immediately jumped down and looked up at me with a very concerned and contrite look. She was quite relieved when I offered her another pecan. I would not have thought a squirrel could have expressed those concerns. And, no, I am not being anthropomorphic!
No, I agree – It’s just that theriomorphism works so well on humans.
That musta been a eureka moment for the squirrel when she looked in your office window and saw the guy who puts the food on the other windowsill.
OH, so *that’s* why the neighbourhood raccoon was scratching at my patio door! The food bowl for the feral cats must have been empty!
“the gray squirrels … have failed” 🙁
Somehow, I feel this must be a line in an animated fantasy movie, perhaps spoken by a goat.
It’s up there with “Two of our opossums are missing.”
I do not know about squirrels, but it seems reasonable that the missing fur is b/c she used it to line her nest. She is a mother after all.
Unlikely. Grey squirrels don’t do that – to my knowledge, anyway.
Typically the drey is built from twigs (or the squirrel takes up an old crow or magpie nest) and lined with dried leaves and occasionaly feathers. I’ve never heard of them using their own fur.
Good to learn stuff. Thank you.
Anyone who puts out a bird feeder knows how clever squirrels are.
My grandfather once put grease on a pole holding a bird feeder to keep the squirrels from climbing it. It worked for a short while, until one squirrel rolled in the dirt, collecting a bunch of grit, then proceeded to climb the pole as if the grease weren’t there.
Yeah – that looks like a touch of mange to me. Grey squirrels and foxes in my garden (in London) have had it.
Watch out for excessive sun-bathing, excessive scratching/biting at fur, limping, etc. These are symptoms of pretty bad mange.
In the UK you can get help from animal welfare orgs like the RSPCA. I wonder if a similar thing is available in Chicago…?
The advice I’ve had is to get the animal(s) used to being ‘fed’ at a certain time so that a rep from the org can be there to catch them and take them off for treatment. From there they’re re-homed in org sanctuaries, etc (in the UK this happens for foxes and our very rare red squirrels, but unfortunately not for grey squirrels since they’re seen as invasive – cute as they are).
I tried this technique with a fox that had pretty bad mange. It seemed to work well at first, but then its ‘timing’ became unpredictable, and eventually it stopped turning up at all. It probably died – poor sausage.
I don’t suppose they would understand and use a squirrel sized hamster wheel? If they did you could cause them to exercise before mealtime and have the fittest squirrels around.
(rubs hands together) for my squirrel army! Muahahahahaha!!!!
Even though we all know cats are far more intelligent than squirrels (as in cats usually watch squirrels through windows of temperature controlled environmental enclosures while watching the squirrels out at the whimsy of nature), of all the cats I have taken in (and they do number in the 100’s), I remember two in particular that would demand reentry by using their claws on the glass windows. Even my baby sister who looked after them all for a few days could not handle the awful screeching and began to let them in the windows (we did learn which windows were the most often assailed by the cats and kept the screen off of those.) I know it sounds like a wimp-out and lack of training on our part, but I challenge any of you to try to sleep, converse or listen/watch your media choice while that noise continued.
I had 8 squirrels feeding in my yard this summer. I went on vacation 1 1/2 weeks and they are nowhere to be seen upon my return. Will they come back?
The squirrels aren’t around here right now either & I have a lot of them. I suspect they are raising up their second brood of babies & spending more time in the woods where the berries are ripe right now (so no need to eat my boring sunflowers at the bird feeders :)). They’ll show up later.
If you have oaks you may also be getting a nice acorn crop about now. They’re keeping the squirrels around here nicely occupied.
Looking for some help. There is a small squirrel in my yard that has his hind foot entangled in fishing line. He’s limping. Us there any way he can be helped?
Oh, that’s sad!
I would try to find an agency in your area that rents/lends Hav-a-heart style traps (our local animal control facility does), and try to trap the squirrel and get it to a wildlife rehabber. (You can usually find a list of rehabbers near you at your state’s DNR [or equivalent agency’s] website.)
Actually, you might well just start by calling a rehabber for their advice in the first place.
(If you’re not in the States there’s probably some similar service you can find.)