When it's a nice day, I like to feed the squirrels on campus.
No, I'm not insane. I don't talk to them or anything. I just find it quite relaxing.
Plus I've also noticed that people are more likely to strike up conversations with you when you're crouching on the ground offering a monkey nut to a squirrel, and not less likely as you might logically expect.
Here are two squirrel stories that happened today.
Kamikaze Squirrel
Some of the squirrels on campus are timid, and won't come and take an offered nut out of your hand. To feed these squirrels, you have to throw the nut to them, because there's no way they're coming anywhere near you.
Some are more courageous, and will happily run up and gingerly take the nut right out of your fingers, before running to a safer distance to chew it open.
And then there's the insanely brave squirrel. John McClane squirrel, the squirrel that knows no fear. Kamikaze Squirrel. I swear he was wearing a red headband.
I didn't see Kamikaze Squirrel until it was too late. I was standing, a monkey nut in one hand, half a bag of them in the other, rattling the bag to draw out a squirrel from the trees, which when close enough I would then crouch and offer the nut. This routine had proved itself to be a good one for half a bag of nuts already, but Kamikaze Squirrel was about to blow it apart.
I felt something on my foot, looked down, and saw Kamikaze Squirrel there. He'd come right out of nowhere. With not even the slightest hesitation he ran right up my leg like it was the trunk of a tree, and snatched the nut out of the hand by my side. And then, as swiftly as he had appeared, he was gone.
On my trouser leg, Kamikaze Squirrel had left a perfect set of muddy squirrel footprints.
'Squirrel with Two Bones'
Most of the squirrels are pretty single-minded. When they're eating something, they can't be tempted with more food no matter what you might do.
Not this squirrel. It came up to the nut in my hand, and I saw that it already had one in its mouth. It kept trying to take the nut, failing, running a few feet away and starting on the nut in its mouth, but then getting distracted because it spotted my hand again and wow! -- free nut.
It seemed that the squirrel couldn't figure out that it couldn't take the nut when its mouth was already full. I dropped the nut on the ground a couple of feet away, and watched the squirrel go mental. It single-mindedly wanted the nut on the ground, but every time it picked it up with its paws and stuffed it into its mouth, the other nut fell out. It did this repeatedly. I was sitting close by, trying to have a fit of hysterics quietly so I didn't scare it away.
Finally, the squirrel did something new. It dropped both nuts on the ground, looked at them for a moment, picked up the bigger nut, and scarpered up a tree.
Smart squirrel. I'd have done the same.
First, people who insist they are sane rarely are.
Second, one wonders if you are becoming a little too intent on Squirrels. Homo Sapiens are fun to
watch too.
Third, Two words, tetnis shot.
Fourth, Apparently you are making the squirrels smarter. Stop it, or they'll try to take over the world!!!
Fifth, This is all just 'nuts'!
to answer your second point:
I tried to feed a nut to a Homo Sapiens but she just yelled at me and ran away. And later I was asked to leave the park. So I decided to stick to squirrels.
Oh? That is an interesting technique. Who asked you to leave?
Was it an armed policeman, through a megaphone, from twenty feet or so away?
Yeah. From a helicopter.
was the kamikaze squirrel piloting the helicopter?
At the end of the article you state "I'd have done the same."
You clearly wouldn't because you didn't. The option for you to choose the larger of the two nuts and clamber up the tree was there but you chose not to take it. Instead you left the squirrel to it.
Perhaps a more accurate ending would have been "Smart squirrel. I'd have done the same, assuming I was a squirrel."
No. I wasn't being offered two nuts so big that I could only hold one at a time.
I grant you that it would be an unusual situation.
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