One of the Outdoor Staff Pauses for Lunch

12 April

American Red Squirrels are definitely more aggressive and territorial than Gray Squirrels. We live at the southern edge of their natural range, but we usually have one or two of these creatures around. They’re always harassing the grays. Reds are super territorial. When we moved to this house just before the millennium, there was this huge butternut tree in the garden that produced tons of nuts. Big, hard nuts that the resident Red was fiercely protective of. He’d use his sharp teeth to drop nuts on anyone underneath and charge at lightning speed with loud chittering at any Gray that dared to climb up “his” tree. Sometimes it seemed like he spent more energy defending his food stash than he actually gained from eating the nuts. It was a lot of fun - they had two speeds: flat out fast and dead stop.