Thursday, May 16, 2013

Squirrel!


I like squirrels.  I've liked them ever since I played with one in the King's Park in Oslo as a 4 year-old.  He ran around a tree and played hide and seek with me for quite a while.  We even drew a crowd of people who watched this silly play.  I thought he was beautiful - and pretty cool for playing with me.

That was a very long time ago.

Flash forward a few years to, well, a couple of weeks ago.  My good friend Meldee and her husband were on vacation in Zion National Park (Utah).  They met the little fellow pictured above.  I can't believe he posed for a photo!  However, she writes:
We sat down at the end of the trail where it runs into the river, to have a sandwich we brought with us.  This guy just ran over and under me and started looking for crumbs.  He was around our feet for 1-2 minutes.  I wasn't sure he wouldn't try to climb my leg for a bite right out of my sandwich!


According to Meldee, there are lots of squirrels in Zion National Park.  Park officials warn you not to feed the squirrels or any other animals and have some gruesome pictures in handouts and signs of someone who tried to hand feed one.  "It wasn't pretty.." she adds.

These squirrels don't appear to be afraid of humans at all.  It's hard to remember they are still wild animals with very sharp teeth and claws.

In an event of total synchronicity, probably because he knew I'd be posting this today, a beautiful fat squirrel sat out in front of my office building yesterday morning!

Is that weird or what?  Well, probably not.  We have tons of squirrels in this area, too!

Any squirrel sightings in your area recently?

1 comment:

Linnea said...

We had a funny one this morning! Walked out our back door, where we have a little landing with steps going down. There was this squirrel there, and he saw me and ran off the steps, but once I came down he thought he was in the clear and jumped back on, only to nearly run right into Jeff who was coming out the door! He jumped so high off the banister - he was really scared. It gave us a little laugh.