Rocky

I love squirrels. To me they are not destructive rodents, instead they playful critters that have provided me countless hours of entertainment. In Ohio we put squirrel feeders in our front yard, and we sit at our dinning room table and watch the squirrels every day. They chase each other around and stand guard over the feeders until the next bigger squirrel comes and takes their place. For Christmas we got my Dad a new squirrel feeder with a huge glass jar for the squirrels to eat in so that you can watch them better. It took the squirrels a little bit of time before they got brave enough to use it. I am not exaggerating when I say that we waited in anticipation for weeks for the squirrel to start using it. When they finally did, calls were made that went like this:

Erin: "Guess what I'm look at right now in the front yard."
Dad: "What?"
E: "A squirrel in the feeder with the glass jar."
D: "Nooooooo."
E: "Yes."
D: "You can actually see him in the jar eating?"
E: "Yes, he is in the jar eating."
D: "Nooooooo."
E: "Yes!"
D: "Take a picture! I'm missing it."

When I went to Bowling Green squirrels scampered all across campus. There was an albino squirrel for a while, and it was like you were given a badge of honor if you were one of the lucky ones to spot it on campus. (It was hit by a car before I got to see it. There was an article written about it in the BG News when it died, unfortunately their archives do not go back that far for me to link it for you.) Watching squirrels play has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.

This is why I am being completely serious when I tell you the day a squirrel showed up in our back yard, I felt like God sent that squirrel to me. I walked out and there he was perched on the wooden fence watching me as he ate food he had pilfered from our compost. A couple days later I watched him drag a rotten pear out of the compost to his little nook behind our trash cans. When I found an ear of corn in the back corner of our fridge, I put it in his spot on the fence, and I was rewarded the next day when I came home a saw him eating it.

I named my new friend Rocky (after the mountains). If I'm working in the back yard he sits up in the neighbor's tree and watches me, and we make polite conversation. I tell him about the squirrels at home, and he asks me why I'm not bring him more food. One day when I put the trash can back in it's spot near his nook, he was not happy and chided me rather loudly from his tree branch.

This is Rocky's friend Oscar. I'm pretty sure Oscar was put there to scare Rocky away, but they became friends instead. Oscar is a really good listener!