Nah, squirrels are dumb. Ravens and crows will do what you describe, but by I don’t think squirrels do. It’s more likely he forgot that was the one he just buried, and thought he was stealing it from another squirrel.
hehe, oops.
Oh ye of little squirrel faith. They remember that stuff. It’s their job.
Speaking of which, the red squirrel strikes again! He kicked the ass of a black squirrel this morning and had a staring contest with him after just to make sure the mutherfucker knew who’s the boss. He then proceeded to take a swipe at a cardinal who spent too long perched on his tree.
It’s interesting that the red squirrel is such an ass-kicker. Over in the Merry-Old across the pond the American gray squirrels are out-competing their English red squirrel cousins:
What’s funny about this is invasive species are not just “American”. They’re regional. In my state, the local and native squirrel has been battling and losing to the larger I believe grey squirrel here for years. It doesn’t help that all these big and aggressive squirrels have few predators outside of man because we keep chasing away the coyotes, and the wolves, bear, foxes and cougars left awhile ago. We still have birds of prey of prey I guess and the rattlers (which are not in town).
Yeah, as far as I can see the rabbits, squirrels, possums and raccoons breed and thrive in urban areas with few predators beyond humans in cars.
We do have some fox where I live in the suburbs and I guess they will hunt some of these. Owls too. Dogs are penned these days and some cats may roam but they probably don’t kill much besides baby offspring.
Cats are hell on small birds, unfortunately.
We have coyotes here now, which I wish we didn’t, but also birds of prey that I never saw as a kid.
I’d be surprised if foxes made much of a dent in the grey squirrel population. Both of them thrive in UK cities, and the foxes are generally scavengers, though small mammals and birds do form a small part of their diet.
I have a veritable menagerie (sic?) of squirrels in my back yard. Not only do I have the ordinary black and gray squirrels, but also a sizable population of white squirrels. No red ones though. I’ve also seen in my yard, kid you not, a squirrel that was half-black and half-gray, split right around the tummy area (chest/head was gray, but waist/legs was black as night). This should not be confused with the 1 squirrel I also saw in my yard that was half gray and half, well, muscle…all of the fur looked like it had been ripped off of the upper portion of the torso, and I could literally see muscles.
Tony
Are you sure that wasn’t some kind of undead revenant squirrel?
I would have thought it was dead, just from the appearance, but it was moving around as if everything was normal. It was the daytime, so maybe, if it was undead, it wasn’t a vampire squirrel.
Tony
Not to be be too morbid… it would be the babies or the small ones. They thin out the population when they’re helpless too. We have foxes around here as well. Beautiful animals…
Until they open their mouths.
Which is also the case with some humans.
We have a family of (brown) foxes living in the woods behind our house. They mostly stay out of our yard because our dog is significantly bigger than they are and they don’t realize what a pathetic coward she is. However, their needless fear of her does not stop them from taunting her as often as possible; they have a very good idea of where she can and cannot go.
Now, we have an outdoor cat, and we feed him canned food that we set out a little off the front porch whenever he yowls to be fed. Now, the dog adores the cat-food, which smells terrible and is irresistible to her; whenever she is off the leash in the front yard she will sprint to the front porch to lick any empty can clean of residual stinky gunk.
The foxes love the cat-food as well, and late at night they will come into the front yard and look to see if there is an empty can there that we haven’t yet cleaned up. There’s never any significant amount of food left in the can, but like the dog, the foxes just want to lick it clean.
The thing is, the foxes move the empty can off the porch and about eight feet out into the grass… exactly right in front of the front window where the dog stands her sleepy sentinel each night. They’ll then yip to wake up the dog before settling in to lick the can while she goes crazy, barking and batting at the window with her paws and incidentally rousing me out of bed.
Damned things.
I love dogs but man they can eat some strange shit, like their own vomit, poop from the rabbits that live nearby, metal, sticks, grass, a blanket, pillow stuffing, my list goes on and on and that’s just the two small dogs I have.
I could TOTALLY see one of them having a cat food fetish.
I could also TOTALLY see them wallowing in fox poop if they ever find some.
Apparently dogs like cat food because it’s generally higher protein than dog food. They also like cat poop because it’s still generally higher protein than dog food.
That is funny.
Looks like I’ve got to make an emergency trip to Louisiana for family reasons tomorrow, and on short notice a flight to the municipal airport isn’t going to be possible. So, I’ll fly to DFW, get a car and drive about 5 hours. sigh. And no offense to the Texans on these boards, but I’m a bit nervous because I have seen the most amazing displays of road rage on Texas roads and highways. Will be on my guard.