Douglas the Squirrel

As I mentioned in a previous post, there is this small squirrel who spends lots of time in the pine tree in front of strawberry house. We named him/her (we do refer to Douglas as he so although I do not know his sex I will stick to that from here on out) Douglas since we were told he is a Douglas Squirrel. He has a voratious appetite, or at least is storing up a lot of pinenuts. Douglas chews all the scales off pinecones to get to the pinenuts between them, then drops the cores of the cones. Anastasia got into collecting the pinecone cores and counting them to see how much he had eaten/stored. Before she left last week she had found almost 500! At one point she found a stash of uneaten pinecones, about 50 of them, which he quickly ate through after she found them, presumably afraid she would steal them.

We are quite sure there is just one squirrel, we only every see one and he seems quite tame, willing to be around people, even people with power tools. Although he does like to drop things on people, or try to, or into wheelbarrows people are using. And the week we were cutting metal roofing with a skill saw he was not around much, it made an awful noise, like a metal animal in it's death throws. Normally he is in the pine tree chewing away, but I have seen him in the mudpit drinking, and even in the house climbing on the walls and on a windowsill. He also makes interesting sounds, almost like he is trying to imitate us, or the power tools.