Grand Theft Walnut!

April 26, 2015 • 3:00 pm

I am a good deity to my squirrels, but how do they repay me for giving them ample noms, water, and a clean windowsill to eat and bask on? With disdain and contempt! Today the thieving little bastards stole an entire bag of walnuts when I wasn’t looking. And, for your information, walnuts are $4 a pound; so that plastic bag, containing about 30 walnuts, cost me around five bucks. At the rate I dole those nuts out, it would have lasted a week.

Instead, the rodents purloined it in a matter of minutes.

Here’s the story.  As a good Squirrel God, I clean out their water dish—a square box made of heavy glass—every couple of days. They love their water, and lap it up like cats, but make an unholy mess, polluting the water with dirt and seed husks. I empty it and put in fresh water daily, and once a week I give it a good scrub with soap and water.

I did that today, removing the dish from the windowsill and then, because the window is heavy and hard to open, I propped it up with an old pipette-tip box so it would be easier to put the dish back.  Here is the crime scene, with the window cracked about five inches:

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The hammer was used to crack walnuts when the squirrels hadn’t yet learned to open them, while the toilet brush (bought NEW) is used to remove seed and nut debris from the windowsill.

In the photo below, do you see the cart to the left with the jars on it? That’s where I keep the squirrel food: there are sunflower seeds, peanuts (both roasted [unsalted] and raw), birdseed, and—until the Grand Theft Walnut occurred—a clear plastic bag containing roughly thirty walnuts. Those are given out ad lib as special treats, and only to squirrels who take them from my hand.

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I forgot about washing the dish for about 15 minutes, and then scrubbed it with detergent and hot water and took it back to the window. When I got there, I discovered that all the walnuts—every one—was GONE, and along with them the plastic bag that contained them. Here you can see the area where the bag with the walnuts rested. It is now empty.

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I don’t know how they did it, but since the bag was also gone, I can only guess that one or more squirrels came into the lab, made the jump or climb to the cart, found the nuts, and absconded with all the loot.  I can find no remnants of the bag. One or more of the thieving rodents stole an entire week’s worth of walnuts.

And somehow, I think, there is a squirrel near my building who looks like this:

Squirrel Hoarding Walnuts

This is what I get for being generous. Now I’ll have to run out this afternoon and get another five bucks’ worth of walnuts. After all, I don’t know how many of them split the loot, and I don’t want any to be deprived.

We all know, though, that squirrels are shifty little bastards. That was demonstrated in a famous xkcd cartoon in which they pull their nefarious stunts on each other:

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Well, life with squirrels is never dull. . . .

79 thoughts on “Grand Theft Walnut!”

  2. Just remember the words of Charles Bowen:

    “The rain it raineth on the just
    And also on the unjust fella;
    But chiefly on the just, because
    The unjust hath the just’s umbrella.”

    Don’t let the just squirrels go without just because there are a few scoundrels. You wouldn’t want them to start disbelieving in you, would you?

      1. My wife told me to buy a new toilet brush, but after a couple of days, I went back to using toilet paper.

        Ba Da Bing.

  4. Crime is on the rise in Chicago. Perhaps the squirrels are suffering from a walnut prohibition, imposed by the Squirrel Congress.

  5. Did you ask around? Maybe one of the others who works in the lab forgot to bring lunch today.

        2. Too bad you didn’t have video cameras to catch the little thief. I would’ve liked to see how he hauled off the bag. It is kind of adorable to picture.

          I bet that squirrel is out there using those walnuts to set up his own squirrel mafia. Do,img out bribes to the squirrel government and securing squirrel protection. He is probably wondering about using some of his walnuts to star up a gambling business.

          1. Yes indeed. Jerry should purchase a Go Pro, or similar, camera for situations like this.

    3. I wondered the same myself! It may be a human without Proper Respect for the issues of squirrel deities and their subjects.

      I would expect squirrels to try and eat the plastic, leaving behind evidence, and thirty walnuts is pretty heavy for squirrels. They would have to cooperate over Difficult Terrain. That would likely leave evidence too.

  6. I have a walnut tree in my backyard. Last year the squirrels ‘stored’ their winter supply in my neighbours ( 2 neighbours) washroom venting pipes. DISASTER.

  9. This is embarrassing. Professor out-smarted by a squirrel. I’m surprised they didn’t take the hammer with them. Most likely left the nuts in the bag and just hauled ass. Less trips.

    Is this grand theft in squirrel terms. Remember, the squirrel had no choice.

  10. Reminds me of an internet cartoon that I saw of a police officer interviewing a tearful wife about her missing husband:
    ‘So let me see if I got this straight, it was a very large squirrel and your husband is a nut’.

  11. Oh, if you discover this squirrel hanging around with a Moose, you have big problems.

  12. I do not recommend leaving the hammer where the wee creatures can get hold of them.

  13. Looks like you should store them in a plastic jar.. until they start chewing through them at least.

    1. And completely off topic, I think I realized why my cat is sad. My building seems to have gotten the upper hand in the unending struggle against mice and he no longer has meaty treats to hunt at night.

  14. squirrels will go through plastic jars like a hot knife through butter. They got a taste for the koi food we had on the porch.

    I had an attempted theft in my house too. The local squirrels chewed a hole in my screen and tried to make off with a whole bag of hot dog buns. Good they didn’t quite understand that the hole needed to be bigger.

  15. There’s an awful lot of food stored right under a sign that clearly says ‘NO FOOD’, perhaps the squirrel was trying to do a good deed and keep the squirrel god from getting arrested.
    (Nice fly drawing on the Coyne cart too)

  16. Ceiling Cat god helps those that help themselves?

    Well, they didn’t really have a choice, did they?

  17. Squirrel God is nuts – other gods would inflict a thousand years of suffering for every slight.

  20. How could one squirrel get back out of the window with a $5 bag of walnuts intact? If two or more were working together, how did they do that? If you put up CCTV or a webcam it will never happen again. Moral: never underestimate squirrels.

        1. You laugh, but there are people who say this kind of shit in all seriousness. I heard someone up here (Canada) once worrying that metric seeds (measured in Kg rather than Lbs.) would not grow as well:-(

          1. I once had a person ask me the following.

            “How many 1/8 are in an inch? 5, right?

            After the flabbergasted open mouthed staring, struggling not to snort or laugh, I calmly found a ruler and took a few moments to explain the very basics of fractions.

            Another success of our public school systems. The person didn’t have any problem understanding it once I explained it. He just hadn’t learned it yet, though he was probably about 25 years old at the time.

          2. I hate fractions. I used to convert into decimal when in school and then I’d get into trouble.

          3. Decimal is much easier. I can not really fathom why the US has not been able to go metric. Everyone always talks about “having to learn” metric as being the issue. That excuse has been the go-to for at least 25 years now.

            I’ve long since called bullshit. There really isn’t any learning curve involved. Even USians learn decimals from the very start of math in school. And when you are measuring things it doesn’t matter what the numbers represent. All that is necessary is that you read numbers off of a gauge of some sort. And when you are calculating, again, it doesn’t matter what the numbers represent.

    2. Probably dragged the bag. They also are strong – look how they scale those trees!

      1. Right. Eastern gray squirrels weigh in at about a pound, and routinely perform all manner of acrobatics including hanging upside down from tree limbs, flinging themselves from tree to tree, etc. So dragging a squirrel’s weight worth of nuts over a windowsill doesn’t seem out of the question.

        1. If it were all on a flat surface it would be easier to understand, but how did the squirrel[s] get from the table to the windowsill? It would have take either a leap from the bin lid or a leap from the floor, all the time weighed down by a large bag of walnuts. That’s what I find hard to picture.

          2. The eastern gray squirrel is neither, but I wonder if it had a little red cape and a little diamond-shaped S on its chest. “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Super Squirrel!”

  22. Get in the whine line, PCC. A very similar thing happened to me two weeks ago. I keep my bird and squirrel food in the shed. I buy the big bags (25 pounds, maybe). I fill up the bird feeders and scatter some more plus extra helpings of sunflower seeds on the ground. I generally return the bag to the shed and shut the door. Left the door open for 15 or 20 minutes while I was in the garden planting potatoes (six varieties this year, 2 early, 2 mid-season, 2 late). Went to the shed to discover the critters had chewed holes in the bags and scattered victuals hither and yon.

    2. We keep all the feed in the garage, inside of plastic containers that are on wheels. 20 or 25 pound bag will fit inside with latch down lids. We also have a cat in the garage and that tends to keep the mice away.

  24. Can’t believe you would defame a whole group of squirrels because of one wayward individual. Besides, what did you expect, flaunting your walnuts in broad daylight? You’ve given walnuts freely before, and they were saving you the trouble. Clearly, this was an open invitation to the buffet.

  25. And somehow, I think, there is a squirrel near my building who looks like this

    He is the Squirrel God now.

    1. nah, it was the evil, one-eyed, limping janitor who was not happy tha PCC was there on a Sunday.

  28. That bin lid isn’t the kind that flips around, is it? If it is, you might want to check for squirrels inside the bin.

    “Is that the Squirrel God stomping around out there?”
    “Shhh! If he hears us, he’ll know we’re the ones who desecrated the Temple of Seeds and Nuts.”
    “It’s dark in here and there are no walnuts.”

  29. Way to go, squirrels! 😀

    Over the next few days you might check the local trees to see if there’s a pile of walnut shells building up beneath them. Of course, the squirrels could have stashed them one by one to save for hard times.

    Let’s see…have you dusted for prints? But chances are, they’re not in the FBI database anyway.

    I suggest you start keeping a red dye pack in the walnut bag.

  31. Just wondering – where did the label of ‘vermin’ come from? I’ve heard squirrels described that way plenty of times. Our family farmhouse has plenty of squirrels in its garden, along with birds, pheasants, dormice, even the occasional wild goat or two, but it’s only squirrels that are singled out by my mother.

    It’s bizarre – this is a woman who yells at me when I gently swipe away a moth. She is endlessly forgiving of our new kitten’s anally-expressed, Jackson Pollock-esque contempt for clean surfaces. Yet she sees squirrels as vermin – undeserving of even a shred of compassion. I have no idea where this widespread revulsion came from and I’d like some empirically sound squirrel info that undercuts her fascistic dislike of the poor sods.

  33. As a criminal defense attorney with many years’ experience, I offer to represent any squirrel suspect pro bono, as it appears that the “victim” is very unscientifically relying on sketchy circumstantial evidence.

    1. I am with you! Who props open a window and leaves a whole bag of walnuts out to tempt squirrels anyway? Where was the security camera footage? The lab security alarm system?

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