Last summer, a neighbor told me a bit about the cultural life of our local red squirrels. He said that among this tribe, single females hold territory. This information explained our recent experience; many bits of information clicked into place, making sense of what we’ve seen lately.
In the past, we and the local ravens purged our compound of red squirrels (see Blood Lust). We didn’t kill them all; one that we spared was a skinny little waif of a squirrel. She seemed to live somewhere beyond the Power Point, the rocky ledge that holds our wind generator and solar array. We often saw her furtive forays into our yard from our window.
Some years passed, and she grew into a beautiful adult. She also established our yards as her territory, apparently. Most of the time, while we often saw other squirrels on the periphary of our compound, this one seemed to be the only resident. Our neighbor’s explanation revealed why that seemed so.
That worked fine for us. She didn’t bother anything. She never raided our gardens (see Mess With Our Strawberries, and I’ll Go “Farmer McGregor” on Your Ass!). She didn’t make a whole lot of noise, compared to other squirrels. She didn’t bombard us with spruce cones (see The Squirrels are Going Nuts!). We rather enjoyed hosting her as mistress of our holdings in Squirrel Land.
That is, until she crossed a line.
Exhibit A for the Prosecution (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).