A squirrelly thing happened to my daughter, Angelin, during last week’s snowstorm. She was waiting for a business appointment in Lexington, NC and saw a squirrel scampering across a yard with a white baseball-sized something in his mouth. The squirrel ran up a tall tree and put the item in a cavity in the tree. Ten minutes later, the squirrel came down the tree, picked up another ball of white, ran back up the tree and deposited his find again. Ten minutes later – same thing.
Angelin asked what I thought was going on.
I don’t know this for a fact, but I suspect the squirrel did pick up balls of snow and took them to the cavity in the tree where his body heat would ultimately melt the snow and allow him to drink.
Squirrels are rodents, so they are not very smart, but they are nothing if not resourceful. They are persistent in finding food, building nests and surviving. I saw a few in my yard last week that smelled food beneath the 6-inches of ice and snow and dug to retrieve it. And somehow or another they will always find a way to get into your birdseed.
