Last fall, after a late frost ruined all of the fruit on two apple trees in my back yard, I made the deci­sion to leave it all as fod­der for the birds this win­ter.   Much to my cha­grin, the squir­rels are the only crea­tures that have been mak­ing use of the offer­ing and mostly that’s been hap­pen­ing over the last month or so.  We haven’t had a par­tic­u­larly hard win­ter, but I sus­pect that the more palat­able win­ter food has been con­sumed and now these lit­tle ver­min are hav­ing to settle..

I’ll be clear that these lit­tle crea­tures are ver­min, and a nui­sance, they’ve chewed through more than one impor­tant bit of the house, and make a habit of skit­ter­ing along the stucco out­side my bed­room at ungodly hours of the morn­ing. I yell at them, shake my fists, and even pound on the walls  on occa­sion, but I must admit it’s dif­fi­cult to NOT enjoy watch­ing them scam­per through the snow and scurry up the trees to pick fruit nearly the same size as their lit­tle carcasses.

I caught this lit­tle guy the other day camped out on a sunny win­dow sill and quite enjoy­ing his meal (until I came along that is..)