18 thoughts on “Squirrel massage”

  2. I’ve never given a squirrel a massage, but some have come up to my lap and demanded to be fed. They are so tame (in my neighborhood) that they must be taught by parents that they have nothing to fear from us humans–and to look cute because we are pushovers for feeding them.

    1. At a place I lived years ago the squirrels were so acclimated to humans that they would often climb all over you, though they wouldn’t let you handle them. Sort of like a persnickety cat. They also commonly dug around in, and even burrowed into pockets looking for goodies if you were slow to produce them or, ceiling cat forbid, didn’t have any to give them.

      1. @darrelle I had to look that word up – in the UK it’s “pernickety”. A very good cat word I think.

        1. It is one of my mother’s favorite cat words. Funnily enough when I first heard her using it I thought it was just a nonsense word she had made up.

          The difference between the US English and UK English is interesting. Wonder how that happened? Etymology is fascinating.

  3. Considering the environment, I would say that the squirrel suffers from acute acrophobia. =D

    More seriously, a likely mishap, apriori more likely than foul play I would think, is disease or consumption of intoxicants like from alcohol containing berries. (The correlation between camera and foul play always messes with priors.)

  5. When I was about nine or so, a squirrel came up to my mother while she was working in the garden and started out by sitting on her foot, then climbed up her until she was holding it like a cat. He enjoyed being held and petted, also very much like a cat, and we ended up adopting each other as pets. One cool summer evening, he crawled into my sweater sleeve and we couldn’t get him out, so he spent the night wrapped up in it. We fixed up a hutch for him in the basement, and he spent his nights in the house and his days in the yard. He was our pet for a little more than a year, and when he stopped coming in at night, we assumed he’d fallen victim to whatever does most squirrels in – predator, car, natural causes (Wikipedia says, “Many juvenile squirrels die in the first year of life. Adult squirrels can have a lifespan of 5 to 10 years in the wild. Some can survive 10 to 20 years in captivity.”).

  6. Just the other day I saw two gray squirrels playing together along low branches. One was fussing over the back and head of the other and I suspected I’d be witnessing some reproductive behavior, but I didn’t see anything overt. There was a lot of nudging along the back and neck and head which seemed to be appreciated. The receiver of this attention sprawled on the branch like the above film shows. Maybe squirrels engage in some kind of grooming or massaging in a Platonic relationship outside of courtship.

  7. Try squirrel-rehab.org. LOTS of info including that the normal temp for one is 99 degrees. No instruction about taking it tho maybe I didn’t read carefully enough. The usual way for cats etc I assume would work.
    Otherwise, maybe he is just very smart and guessed how to get free massages –
    keep us UTD? Thank you

  9. My parents enjoyed the squirrels at the first- floor apartment a few years back. They talked to them and would feed them peanuts in the shells. After a while, they would just open their door and the squirrels would come right inside a take a peanut out of the basket they had right inside the doorway. It was fun to watch them come and see them listen to their voices. None that come to eat at our feeders are tame enough to stick around when we come outside. Thanks for the show.

  10. My squirrels and chipmunks have been joined by a new rodent friend – a short-tailed shrew has taken to coming onto the deck in broad daylight and nosing around in the spilled feed. Twice I have stepped out of my front door and had a chat with him or her. I’ll try for a photo, but he is in the shade of the grapevines with their big leaves so it won’t be easy and I might have to upset him with a flash. I don’t expect to make close friends as Blarina brevicauda has venomous saliva and I don’t fancy a nip from those red poisoned teeth!

    1. When I was a kid in the east end of London I’d go into the local park, which had plenty of squirrels as well as a goat(that stank from a mile away), ducks and some rabbits. In the space of a year or so I managed to get bitten by the goat, bitten by a rabbit, bitten by a duck, and I was with my best friend when a squirrel latched onto his finger and inculcated a lifelong case of sciurophobia. It was a busy year.

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