Let me tell everyone about the newest member of our "family". Her name is Scrappy and she's a North American Red Squirrel. Of course, she's not OURS officially, but she has been coming to visit us on our 3rd floor balcony since September.
One day back in September, the cats were looking out the window (actually a glass sliding door, but we call it a window since you can't go anywhere that way but on the deck...no exit) Anyway, the cats were looking out the window and acting highly unusual. Normally they look at the birds feeding from our bird feeders and just make that clicky sound like they are trying to talk to the birds, but this day they were actually growling and hissing. We had no idea what was up. We approached the window and were amazed to see a squirrel! It was on our deck for about a 1/2 hour, trying to eat the suet and seeds from the feeder. Then it left. The next day it came back. So that evening Julie bought some bulk peanuts from the grocery store and decided she would try to feed him. We called him Mr. Scrappy. Everyday she would sit by the door and wait and offer a peanut. First he would come close, but wouldn't take it from her hand....but would pick it up off the ground. After a week, he would eat from her hand! To keep the cats from harming Mr. Scrappy, Julie would keep the screen door closed till he came. One day he came while Julie wasn't in the room and started climbing the screen door. Julie was able to get a movie of this with the digital camera and showed me it that night when I got home from work. It was amazing....she then let me know that we had incorrectly sexed Mr. Scrappy, who was actually a female. Hence, Mr. Scrappy became just Scrappy.
Over time, we have been able to hand Scrappy peanuts even while sitting on the porch in the rocking chair. She just climbs right up on our lap. We don't allow her inside the house, since she is actually still a wild animal and could possibly have fleas or ticks, etc in her fur coat, but we enjoy her company each and every day. North American Red Squirrels are solitary and spend almost all their time hunting for food and storing it in caches to use during the winter. We've been keeping her busy with a steady food source and she has been keeping us company and giving the cats something else to look at besides the chickadees, juncos, sparrows, finches, wrens, bushtits, hummingbirds, and occasional varied thrushes.
Just a couple more snow pictures to show before I move away from the topic. At this moment, the snow is finally melting and it is RAINING, thank goodness. Hopefully it will melt away quickly since dirty melting snow really looks awful. These pictures are how I want to remember the snow.
