I call this black squirrel “Stubby.” In case it’s not obvious, he only has half a tail. Or maybe 5/8’s of a tail. It makes him very recognizable even from a distance. Perhaps he caught it in a mousetrap or something. He is very nervous and kind of “crawls” towards me until I toss him something.

Side note: Maybe I should make a blog sub-category of ‘backyard squirrels” or something. Then again, once I’m done posting the initial rash of squirrel pics and stories, I probably won’t post too many more after that. Meh. I don’t know.

Occasionally, a squirrel or two is sitting on the lawn in sight of the glass door and happy to see me. Most aren’t that comfortable with me (which is a good thing) and will, instead, hover back on the fences or whatever, waiting to see if I’m going to put stuff in dishes. As I said, there’s a few who are quite bold/brave, but more on them later.

It’s hard to take an in-focus picture of a running squirrel….

I don’t typically name backyard wild animals, because they’re not like cats or dogs where you become all cozy and cuddly with them - not to mention, it’s often hard to tell them apart - but some of the critters I do eventually tend to associate with a casual moniker. For instance, I think of this black squirrel as “ScarHead” or “ScarTop”, for obvious reasons.

I have no idea if he sustained his injury while fighting with other squirrels, or because he had some parasites or something, but it looked ugly. Initially it was even worse than in the top picture. I’ve read that squirrels can get fly larva parasites under their skin, which create big bumps. When the larva matures it burrows out, leaving an open sore spot. They don’t really hurt the squirrels, but I’m sure it’s irritating. Anyway, perhaps something like that happened to this fellow.

After a couple months, the injury was largely healed, and at this point I can barely tell it was there. By now, however, I can recognize him by other means - personality, certain color tones/spots on his head, etc.

It’s been raining. And raining. Which is good, since we’re in the middle of a bad drought. The backyard squirrels still come to the sliding glass door between heavy downpours. I could talk all day about the squirrels in our yard … one day I’ll blog about it in depth. Maybe.

But in brief, after a couple months of patience, many will now quickly come when I call or when they hear the door slide open. There’s maybe 7 or 9 of them that visit either every day or every other day. I spoil them I suppose, and a few will take food from my hand now, but I’m also careful about making sure they stay wild. In other words, they do just fine if I skip giving them anything etc. :P

The squirrels eat a little of what I hand out - I’m very particular about what I give them, with a large variety of nuts and some fruit - but mostly they love to bury everything. Their favorite nuts to bury appears to be almonds (shelled or unshelled), unshelled walnuts, and unshelled peanuts, in that order. Some will watch and dig up what one squirrel buried, only to rebury it. Their “I must bury” obsession never seems to end. They’re very busy creatures that give me hours of amusement from just watching them through the windows.

I still put out birdseed, too. There’s at least 8 mourning doves and quite a few bluebirds that caw-caw-caw for their daily peanuts. Gazillions of pictures have been snapped…I think I’ll start posting some of them, now. May as well…what’s the point of taking a photo if you never share it?

The above photo is actually from the fall, when all the trees were turning. Right now they’re almost bare. But it’s prettier to see fall foliage than naked trees. Since I live in the “evergreen” California coast, this is probably the first time I’ve lived anywhere that had a lot of tree color in fall.

Oh and btw, Merry Christmas. I wonder how many people this year are re-discovering, due to economic woes, that Christmas is not about how expensive or desired a material gift is … it is really, in my opinion at least, an extension of Thanksgiving. A time to ponder and be grateful for what you have, instead of being cranky/greedy about what you don’t have.

So be grateful, not cranky…and try not to develop that fanatic sale-mob mentality in order to avoid trampling any more Wal-Mart employees to death, k?

It’s raining. Which of course means pictures.

I need a waterproof camera. But I guess a baggie held on by twine and rubberbands works in the meantime.

Another minor “complaint” about this new version of WordPress … I don’t like the photo uploader menu anymore, either. Sigh.