Just as one wants happiness and fears pain,
just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures."
His Holiness The Dalai Lama
Squirrelyville (part two)
Teenage pups outgrow the burrow.
Goldie nurtured five bald, helpless pups in an underground den and brought them out to meet the world on April 24. The nuggets grew up outside my kitchen-sink window.
babies teenagers predators Stomp
MzPrint's home e-mail the rodent photographer
Runtly doesn't like it out in the world. She sticks close to mama and doesn't scuffle
with the siblings. The others formed alliances: Sweet and Shorty, Alpha and Eek.
The sugar and spice personalities are nice little girls and the aggressor is a male...Right?
Maybe not always; but I won't torture decent sentences with that silly "he or she" construction.
Sweet timidly stands up to Alpha.
Every family group has an alpha pup to
boss things. This teeny bully pokes
his sibling back into the burrow. Speaking her mind with a shaky voice, Sweet stands up for the little guy,
with silent backup from Shorty.
The gentle siblings learned to fight back.
As they grew, the pups fought for territory.
the east, leaving the brats at the big house.
The kids remodeled; dug another entrance, bigger rooms, secret underground passages. They dug until their house collapsed.
Sweet and Shorty migrated south to dig a cave in the shade of a scrub creosote bush.
When Alpha tries to take over their happy home, Sweet and Shorty hold the territory.
* Females usually settle in colonies near their birthplace, males go off on their own.
May 10 They have separate burrows and each claim a good chunk of property, will share guard duty but seldom food. May 24
June 3
Custom desert landscaping by Alpha pup.
He bites rocks and spits them out of the way and keeps kicking dirt. In two days he pushed these mounds out the front entrance. He did have to give up on one tunnel, but has at least one emergency exit hole just across the fenceline. Always under construction.
will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will
not know them, and what you do not know you will fear.
What one fears one destroys." Chief Dan George
Recommended Reading
"Wild Animals I Have Known" by Ernest Thompson Seton.
He understands animals and translates their signs, scents and movements into English to tell their stories of survival.
Birds and other small mammals also understand and respond to the warning chirps of squirrels.
Our ground squirrels talk -- with half a dozen distinct eeks, with scratches at a burrow entrance, and with clear body language.
"Trespassers Beware"
with an adorable war dance.
June 3 - 70 days old
squinches his eyes on the downbeat, and tattoos a warning. Always a bully. He wants to claim everything
from the fence to the house, including the cacti and the water dish. He is learning manners, reluctantly. Really!
Squirrels understand a "no" and a finger wag, just as they can read a thump or a tail swish from a rival.
"back off" signal with animals.
The submissive poses are for spring courting. Males Wag; sometimes the females Wag back, often they Swish.
Tender gestures
like hugs and nose kisses are for babies.
April 24 - 33 days old
Goldie gets a welcome home hug.
Teenagers have something to
prove and nothing nice to say.
More squirrel talk and some bigger, carnivorous bunkhouse habitants in Living takes Life (Squirrelyville part three).
Three out of four will die within the first year. (Small rodents are desert nachos.)
Squirrels with the wits not to starve or be eaten can live about four years.
Ernest Seton notes that "the life of a wild animal always has a tragic end."
Our pampered bunkhouse squirrels beat the statistics;
3 of Goldie's 5 fat and happy after two months topside.
(This is not a valid stat for squirrel research. They've led a sheltered life.)
August 7 -- the desert got another one. Happy Trails, Stomp
(one) baby pictures (two) teenage squirrels
(three) survivors, predators, et. al. (four) eulogy to Stomp
MzPrint's Home Photos © 2008 by Pam Leany (aka Nathyn's mom)
Someday I'll tell you about Mousey Pooh. My know-it-all husband said:
"Are you nuts?" (It's like he's never met me.) "It's stupid to feed a
desert woodrat on the patio at night." (Don't you hate it when they're right?)