Squirrel plays a risky game
It's springtime in Toronto, the snow has almost completely melted, and the squirrels are out in force! Wherever you go round here, you are likely to see gangs of squirrels hanging out, intimidating you with particularly large nuts. They're big, they're furry, and they're out in force! Watch out for your nuts.
Where I come from, most squirrels were small and grey, although these are the North American imports. In Aberdeen, where I used to live, there were still a good number of the native red squirrels around - not to be confused with American red squirrels, European ones are generally exceedingly cute and very playful. Here in Toronto, most squirrels are black, a phase of the grey squirrel colouring that you don't get in the UK. They do have black squirrels in Eastern Russia, but by all accounts they are far from cute (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4489792.stm). Scottish squirrels are generally a tame bunch - they don't go around with St. Andrews crosses painted on their faces attacking English squirrels (perhaps they should!). Your nuts will be safe in Scotland.
Anyway, we have black squirrels here, and most every morning they are playing around outside the windows, climbing the trees and the wires, generally doing squirrely things, and eating nuts.
Unfortunately for the squirrels, we have cats. For squirrel-lovers, these are indoor cats, so there is no risk of finding Mungo with a large and bushy tail in his mouth. In practice - Mungo is a bit of a wuss in the catching small animals stakes. Although he has anger management issues, and is quite able to attack both people and cats, he is not so good at small things. Mungo's entire lifetime score so far consists of two small birds, about five mice, and a number of earthworms. Mungo likes earthworms, and has been observed hitting the ground with his paws, in an apparent attempt to bring them to the surface, so he could bring them into the kitchen and bite them in half. He seemed to have been adversely affected by the lies perpetrated in old Microsoft advertisements.
Morag has some way to go to equal this score. She has to my knowledge brought in a bee in her mouth, but she let it go after we spent considerable effort trying to persuade her that keeping a bee in her mouth was unlikely to be healthy either for her or for the bee. She has also managed to pull the legs off a number of spiders. But as far as I can tell, she has never dispatched anything with a backbone. You can only tell by the spider legs she has left scattered around the kitchen floor. Vertebrates are safe from Morag.
Back to the squirrels. There is a small gap just above the guttering in the garage roof that backs onto the apartments here, and one particular squirrel seems to have decided that it will make a fine nest! I've seen a large bushy tail vanishing into the gap. Unfortunately, it backs onto the window about one metre away from the Serengeti (no, not that Serengeti, but out cat activity centre.) Our cats spend a significant proportion of the day sitting on the Serengeti, although the elapsed waking time spent there is fortunately relatively brief - after all - these are respectably middle-aged cats, with rich inner lives.
So during the day, we've set up a webcam, which watches the cats. We have yet to see a cat/squirrel face-off, but I am sure it is only a matter of time. My money's on the cat; Mungo in a mood is slightly more aggressive than the aliens in Alien, and considerably more dangerous. After all, aliens don't look cute and sweet, put their heads on one side, do the silent meow, and then, just when you feel safe - eat you.
Be glad you aren't that squirrel.
See the webcam at:
