Peanuts « Life in Nebraska

5Jun/101

Chipmunk the Squirrel

No longer a baby, but still young, the squirrel named Chipmunk has moved out of her previous home.

Baby Chipmunk Home

When a baby, and in her early weeks she lived in the hole in the maple tree pictured above. Now a resident of our garage, we will make no attempt to discourage her from living there in this dry space out of the weather.

All baby squirrels are cute, and worthy of feeding, but this one gave us a special reason for feeding it. You see, when it was very young and very tiny we noticed it living beneath our hosta plants, and very obviously injured.

She appeared to have some sort of hip injury, and dragged herself around by her front feet. We figured the least we could do was to make sure she had food and water handy. Now she seems to have recovered a lot from her injury, and though her movements still show traces of her previous injury, she does get around quite nicely.

Amazingly shy and cautious, it took many many weeks before she was brave enough to come to our deck for food, and we continued to leave food for her in a spot she would come to.

Eventually she did decide it was safe to come to our deck for food and water, and has come to accept us as the people with peanuts.

Although she will not yet accept a peanut from our fingers, she now will come to the deck when we are there, and if we do toss a peanut in her direction, she will come within a few feet of us. She does try to get up the nerve to come closer to us, and as she contemplates that, all four of her feet are in constant motion, stepping up and down rapidly, but going nowhere as she keeps ready for a potential dash away if needed.

Oh, a squirrel named Chipmunk? Sure, why not? It is nice to be able to discuss a specific squirrel, and a name does help in identification. Vicky began calling this squirrel Chipmunk because of its tiny size when we first noticed it, and the name stuck.

Is Chipmunk a girl? Well, we really don't know, but Vicky began referring to this squirrel as "she" or "her" and that has stuck.

Tagged as: Peanuts, squirrels, Tree 1 Comment

23Apr/100

Short Tail Squirrel

Last year we had infrequent visits from a rather sad looking and very shy squirrel. It's tail appeared to have suffered an injury, and there was very little fur on the back section of its tail.

It had trouble walking, something wrong with its rear legs or hips.

Whenever we'd see it, we'd be sure to put out extra food. Then there was quite a long period of time that we longer saw it.

Short Tail Squirrel Eating

About a week back, this same squirrel reappeared in our back yard, with its tail (now shorter in length) nicely covered with brand new fur, and it's limping barely noticeable!

With a lot of patient coaxing, I was able to get it to take a peanut from my fingers, and it dashed away to enjoy this treat, and was soon back for another peanut (we buy unsalted peanuts for the squirrels). This time it wasn't nearly as shy when it took the peanut.

Short Tail Squirrel Hiding His Treasure

This squirrel made quite a few return trips to our deck that afternoon for more peanuts from my fingertips. Sometimes it would bury the peanut, other times it would eat the peanuts. Eventually it had enough peanuts, and scampered down the deck steps and across the lawn, and headed across the street to wherever it lives.

Glad this squirrel is doing better.

Tagged as: Peanuts, squirrels No Comments

7Feb/101

Squirrel Sandwiches

Vicky's been having fun making squirrel sandwiches lately. I suppose we could call them sandwiches for the squirrels, but I prefer the name squirrel sandwiches.

By accident on one of our grocery shopping trips, I grabbed a jar of crunchy instead of creamy peanut butter, and it sat around in the pantry for quite a while, unwanted, unopened, and unused.

Squirrel Sandwiches 02

We do enjoy feeding "our" squirrels, and Vicky decided just for fun to make a peanut butter sandwich using some of our unwanted crunchy peanut butter and see if the squirrels would eat it. Before putting out this squirrel sandwich, she sliced it into tiny one inch squares to avoid the possibility of just one squirrel taking the entire sandwich.

It turns out, not too surprisingly, that squirrels do indeed like peanut butter sandwiches. These little tiny squirrel sized sandwiches are quite a treat for them, and they will come to the deck, select a sandwich, then scamper off into the arborvitae bush to have their meal, then come back for seconds, thirds, and sometimes a fourth helping.

Squirrel Sandwiches 01

We now have no more of this crunchy peanut butter left, and perhaps on our next trip to the grocery store we may get another jar for the squirrels, they do like this treat, and Vicky has a lot of fun watching them eat their sandwiches.

About these pictures: Obviously these aren't squirrel sandwich photos, but are a couple pictures I took this afternoon.

The top photo is of the friendly one having some bird seed, and the bottom photo is of one of the shy squirrels, trying to be brave enough to come up to me to get a peanut I was holding out for it. No, it was not brave enough yet, but it stayed on the deck to get the peanut I gently tossed in its direction.

Tagged as: Peanuts, squirrels, The Pictures 1 Comment

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