What I do before the ducks come

October 18, 2024 • 11:00 am

I can’t resist helping wild animals, and the local squirrels are hoarding nuts for the winter. But it’s only the best for the squirrels around Botany Pond (there are three), who get very expensive pecans ($5.99 per pound). Over the past weeks, I’ve convinced them that I am not only not dangerous, but also a dispenser of nuts.  First they learned to take them from my hand, and now they’re crawling up my leg to take them. They bury nearly all of them, but that’s okay; they’ll need them in winter.

No, I haven’t been hurt, and I love the feel of their little claws as they put their hands on my fingers to gently take a nut. This one got at least four pecans today.

Photo by Marie:

20 thoughts on “What I do before the ducks come”

  3. I love it. Our family (my family of origin) went camping nearly every summer in the High Sierras (between Mammoth and Bishop, California) and my mother and usually my older brother spent hours each day doing exactly what you’re doing. They were feeding ground squirrels and chipmunks. I can visualize the photos of them with the critters sitting on their heads, shoulders or laps as though the old photo albums were right here. Unfortunately, they’re not. My brother’s widow has all our photos (can you say family feud?) Warms my heart to see your photo. Have you secretly named some of the squirrels?
    Add: And here’s to next Spring and the arrival of the ducks!

  5. I see this and couldn’t prevent my thinking “Hey — you could train the squirrels to ride the ducks using operant conditioning! Science!!”

    Please ignore my confession; it’s not an actual suggestion.

  6. Can you tell the three squirrels apart? If so, how? Have you given them names? I’m asking because I have one “regular” that makes the rounds on our back deck, poking into the various objects and containers, having a sip of water, etc. but I have a hard time telling if it’s always the same one, or if more than one are coming to visit. I have seen two simultaneously, digging/hiding nuts in the yard, never two on the deck at the same time (caching nuts or faking caching nuts!).

    2. Yes. One, named Stumpy, has only about three quarters of a tail, another is fully tailed and fat and sleek, while the third is fuly tailed and skinny. My goal is to make them all plump and sleek before winter.

  7. Try unsalted peanuts in the shell. Squirrels love them and they
    are a lot cheaper than pecans.

    1. Deer love them too. The guy across the street had been feeding peanuts in the shell to the squirrels — then one day tossed a handful to some curious deer looking on. Now he can feed the deer by hand.

      The squirrels still remain cautious, though.

  10. Comment by Greg Mayer

    Here are some other guys who like squirrels: http://www.wafu.ne.jp/~yaz/en/squirrel_fishing.html and more here: http://www.wafu.ne.jp/~yaz/gallery/

    The above guys were at Harvard (like Jerry); the squirrels are very approachable at Cornell (pers. obs.), and I’ve been told the same is true at Princeton. Adding in Jerry’s at U Chicago, there’s a pattern: squirrels are very tame and trusting at reserch-intensive universities; or people at research-intensive universities take good care of squirrels. The hypotheses may not be mutually exclusive.

    GCM

  11. On the one hand, I love it, on the other, people should be careful with respect to mammals and rabies, plague, hanta virus, etc., directly, or tick transmitted diseases like Lyme, indirectly. In Washington state recently there was also an explosion of demanding raccoons in a woman’s yard after she’d been feeding just a few for 35 years. She called 911.

    1. They were out of walnuts when I went to the produce store. So I had to ante up for the more expensive pecans (walnuts are the usual staple). But I am not a piker so I dont buy them the cheapest nuts–roasted, unsalted peanuts.

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