Monday, March 30, 2009

Squirrel Literalists

We watch squirrels running around town and until today had no idea that these cutesy albeit voracious animals turn into mad destroyers once brought overseas. Or they're smarter than one would think and take names like Nutt on a very literal level. Dear American squirrels, Europe might just be too small for you...

5 comments:

Kim said...

hahahahaha!

But seriously they can be real monsters! Even in the states! I remember at my university in Atlanta, lots of squirrels everywhere. They were very territorial if they found something in one of the bins/trash cans around campus. Sitting in the bin munching away and if you threw something in they would jump out at you. I had a friend who was riding her bike and a squirrel was on the path, she swore the thing tried to make her crash!

And also we had a good number of trees around our house, some in our yard and some in our neighbors. Lots of squirrels. My mom has a veg garden and a few fruit trees, the squirrels go crazy. So one year my older sister (who does environmental science and used to catch bats to tag and research) got some traps and caught maybe 5 squirrels. She took them with her on one of her field trips and set them free in some other forest. Didn't help a ton til we got our 2nd dog, he's fast and has caught some but he gets distracted easily so they un/luckily get away. And a neighbor had to cut down a huge tree in his yard because it caused a lot of damage during a big storm a year or so ago, so a few less since they have no home. The squirrels still fight my mom (not literally) for the fruit and veg though.

I have lots of squirrel stories :p

kalimak said...

Impressive :-)

Sebastian said...

I watched the Nachtmagazin the other night and I was in shock!! In order to protect the red squirrel, they started to hunt, shoot and cook the grey squirrels in the UK. Something about this logic does not sound right to me.... They even make pies out of them!

kalimak said...

Squirrel pies??? So morbid.

Couldn't they put the gray fellows on a ship and send them back to America? Disney could finance the endeavor and then make a movie about it. Squirrel Bambi or something like that.

(Great to see you here, Sebastian!)

Kim said...

Wouldn't be much different from pigeon or rat pie? Weren't those considered delicacies in Rome a longlonglong time ago?

And it's what they do to deer, to control the population and protect areas from being over-taken by deer, they allow hunting of deer. But squirrels are so small! I would imagine their meat would be kind of yucky tasting since they're sort of like scavengers :p