The Adventures of a Modern Squirrel

Back in my day, we had to walk to school. Up hill, both ways. In three feet of snow. Gas only cost 29 cents per gallon. A loaf of bread was a nickel. Someone delivered your newspaper to your door every morning. And squirrels ran around all autumn burying nuts in the ground. Yes, digging a hole in your lawn or your flower beds and burying a nut and carefully replacing the soil.

But this is 2009. This is the future. The squirrels of today know that the best place to hide his or her nuts for the long winter is not in the cold, wet (not to mention dirty) earth. The best place would be somewhere dry, relatively clean, with some sort of covering to keep the snow and wind off of them. Somewhere like... our shed.

I got home from work on Friday and Ryan and Bella met me outside for some frantic tail wagging and little howls of delight... (Bella was excited too... haha, sorry, couldn't resist). We stood in the driveway a couple minutes and then Ryan asked me if I wanted to see something funny. He took me through our back yard to the shed, only about 40 yards from our back door. Opened the door to the shed and didn't say anything, just pointed to the salvaged dresser drawers on the floor. They were full, nay, overflowing with walnuts. Every nook and cranny had walnuts packed into it. All along the walls where the angled roof meets the walls, there were 5 to 10 walnuts in every little space.



So we stood in the doorway of the shed, flabbergasted, just laughing at how many there were. Ryan said that it only took the squirrel about two days to fill that drawer. I haven't been back in there since Friday, but I expect the next time one of us opens the door it will be like that famous episode of The Dick VanDyke Show where he has a dream of opening his closet door and thousands upon thousands of walnuts pour out of the closet. (That is a youtube video, the scene I'm talking about happens around the 1:30 minute mark, but I strongly suggest you watch the whole thing. freaking hilarious.)

Our shed is old and not in the greatest shape. I'm sure there is more than one entrance for the squirrel to get in, especially this big gap under the door.

We are going to leave the walnuts, we will probably clean up a bit, but all the nuts will stay in the shed. We're not into causing squirrel starvation. And, this is a good test to see if squirrels actually do remember where their nuts are hidden. It would have to be a really incompetent squirrel to not remember this big pile!

But he'll have to watch out, because Bella's on the hunt!