Squirrels are cute, I know. They are fun to watch –
non-stop tail jerking, hindquarter trembling, rear leg stomping, chirping,
squealing, and whirring – running climbing, and jumping. Lordy, they can make a
person dizzy. They can make a person mad, too – ever had one get into an attic
and destroy some keepsakes to build a nest, or gnaw on some insulation and
cause a short in the wiring of a house?
Years ago, my mom’s mentor, Ola Dublin Haynes, had a
squirrel at the 201 North “D” Street “Wild Bird Café.” Her squirrel was a male
that had been trapped on some relative’s land somewhere to the east of Midland.
For years afterward, in the area just west of Bowie Elementary, a squirrel or
two could be found, but the population did not seem to grow. In the last five
years, however, we have witnessed a “tsunami” of fox squirrels taking over this
town.
“We are up to our ears with the varmints,” reported a
gentleman who informed me that in 2002 he killed 87 of the “bushy-tailed rats”
in his backyard – he is a heck of a shot with a BB gun! “I had a house burn
down when I lived near Houston – they chewed the electric lines and the
resulting short caused the fire, so I am not letting them get started here!” He
did admit that no matter how many he killed, more kept coming.
They are almost everywhere in town – from the trees of
Hogan Park to Bluebird Lane and down to Business 80 and the railroad tracks. In
2002 I gave a talk entitled “The history of horticulture on the southern Llano
Estacado” to over 150 landscape professionals seeking CEU’s to maintain their
professional chemical applicators licenses, and in passing, I mentioned the
spread of the squirrels. After the program, a gentleman stopped me on my way
out of the CEED building – “Hey, buddy – wanna get the low-down on how the
squirrels got here?”
Looking both ways, I pulled him over to the side of the
entry hall. “Yeah,” I answered, sotto voce, figuring he wanted to tell me he
was to blame, and did not want anybody else to know.
“You know those big trees brought to Midland on 16
wheelers and wrapped in netting? When we get a tree off of those big rigs and
set it in the ground, they still have squirrel nests. The momma and the babies
stay in those trees, scared to death. I have seen squirrel families scooting
away at least a dozen times, myself, after we cut the netting and shook out the
branches.”
Most likely, the gentleman’s explanation is the best – no
other method of introduction would have imported enough squirrels quickly
enough for individuals to find mates. With few dogs and cats able to catch the
squirrels and no nesting species of hawk within the city limits (except for the
one pair of Kestrels on the Hilton one year), the little rodents have been able
to establish themselves quite well.
A friend of mine has “rehabbed” a couple of baby
squirrels. She conferred with a veterinarian who gave her the proper medicines
and formulas and showered her with information he downloaded of the Internet.
“They are so personable! Rocky would just chatter and chatter at me when I came
home from work.” My friend did not wish to be identified – she did not want to
be deluged with other orphan animals. “It is hard work – unless you are willing
to make the commitment, you shouldn’t even try.” The squirrels she raised were
released on a ranch in central Texas, where one disappeared immediately, and
the other vanished in a week or two.
Mammalogy professor Vagn Flyger, a leading squirrel
expert that spent thirty years studying one Maryland squirrel population
commented in a 1970’s National Wildlife Magazine, “When a “tame” squirrel is
released, it can’t make it.” To survive a squirrel relies on its internal map
of its 10 to 20 acres of territory; a map imprinted first by schooling from its
parents, and then by the hard lessons of narrow escapes, and constantly
fashioned by the pattern of the change of vegetation over a full year’s time.
(Normally they do not roam much, but during massive acorn failures, forest squirrels
sometimes migrate in huge numbers, searching for new habitat.)
We humans are ambivalent about squirrels. Condemnatory
sorts can gloat in the following; males urinate on females to claim them, one
squirrel rolled up attic insulation into a three-foot round ball, one caught
and released came back 5 miles to the same tree, squirrels go through a mange
cycle that will decimate the population every 10 years, a malaria-like parasite
is found in every squirrel, and there are recorded cases of rabies in a squirrel.
The folks that want to hear positive information can
enjoy these tidbits; there can be up to two sets of two to four young each
year, our fox squirrels usually have a favorite feeding perch to which they
will carry their food, in the winter an extended family of dozen squirrels
sometimes will use the same nest, the young’s eyes are closed for a month and
then remain in the nest for seven more weeks before learning about the
neighborhood, and “they are sooo Ke-ute!”
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