Admittedly, no one ever said squirrels were brilliant. But we have squirrels running the wires between power poles all the time (squirrels, and opossums, and occasionally rats.)<\/p>\n
In December, though, the Eastern Fox Squirrels we have go crazy…chasing each other up and down trees, across the yard, making strange wild leaps in the air (often with a flip or reveral) and tail-signaling like crazy. “I’m handsome, I’m brave, I’m strong, you want me!” “I’m beautiful, I’m lithe, my tail’s bushier, I’m not at all sure you’re good enough for me.” “Com’ere!” “Catch me!” “I’ve got you now, my pretty!” “Fooled you!”<\/p>\n
All day Friday a pair of squirrels were busy dashing, leaping, showing off, with brief pauses to eat the birdfeed. I wasn’t watching closely, so I didn’t see whatever “Hey, watch THIS!” move the sacrificial squirrel made about four in the afternoon. I was working away on the book, writing, when a loud (very loud!) BANG! was followed by the loss of power and frantic beeps from the UPS. Well after dark, the repair truck showed up, and sure enough, under the power pole, was the show-off.<\/p>\n
Now I could be wrong. It could have been some prudent older squirrel or timid young squirrel who put a foot wrong and caused the power outage. But given the recent behavior of squirrels in our neighborhood, I’d bet on the mating game. Someone just had to show off for someone else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Admittedly, no one ever said squirrels were brilliant. But we have squirrels running the wires between power poles all the time (squirrels, and opossums, and occasionally rats.) In December, though, the Eastern Fox Squirrels we have go crazy…chasing each other up and down trees, across the yard, making strange wild leaps in the air (often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wildlife","tag-animal-behavior"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/47"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}