Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Squirrel of the Month Club


My mother frequently posts squirrel photos on her blog.

Well, now I am joining her. This squirrel seems to be fond of dried mulberries. I spotted him in the mulberry-catching net over my backyard.

The mulberries have stopped falling now, and I will have no more mulberry pancakes this year. It's time to take the net down, but I've been busy with other projects: Installing window bars on the basement windows, riding my bike around the route of the Morris Canal, and going to see summer blockbuster movie matinees at the mall. At the mall, I get to watch an unlikely Lois Lane have selective memory recovery, or Johnny Depp play Keith Richards playing a pirate. Plus it's nice and cool at the movie matinees, much nicer than sweating over the laptop in my apartment, and certainly nicer than chasing squirrels out of the mulberry net.

4 comments:

Linda said...

Hey, it's Charlie!

Marie Javins said...

That probably requires some explanation.

When I was a small kid, in the Del Ray section of Alexandria, Virginia, there was a squirrel in our front yard. My father slowly habituated the squirrel--Charlie--to where it would eat peanuts from his hand. This was about the most amusing thing ever to my sister and I, cuz we were tiny and easily amused.

So I guess it's not so unusual that I ended up habituating a wallaby or feeding kookaburras in Australia in 2002.

Marie Javins said...

A squirrel update:

The next door neighbor's boyfriend was helping me pull down the mulberry net. He was up on the fire escape. He surprised a squirrel--from the third story. The squirrel took one look at him and leapt off, into the sky! Duane exclaimed "ohmygodhe'sdead" and I turned to see the squirrel land flat on the deck.

The squirrel then jumped up and scampered up a tree, where he waited for a minute before running away from view. How is that even possible? If Duane had jumped instead of the squirrel, I'd be at the emergency room with him right now.

Marie Javins said...

Squirrel guilt! I just realized the squirrel probably jumped into the net--except we'd just taken the net down.

I hope he isn't dead.