Lecture: Squirrels 101

Today I will be giving a lecture on my Squirrel findings to a bird enthusiast community in Providence, RI. Although my love for birds consists of mainly eating them, it is a paying job so I took it.

There is a lot of miss information about squirrels – I call them “rodent rumors”. I’m sure I’ll have to handle some negative questions about squirrels getting into their fancy feeder eating their expensive bird food meant for red-breasted-what-evers or yellow-tailed-who-cares. These are the same people who don’t like even native “plain” birds that eat the food meant for the snobby birds. They also whine when the birds they DO like eat the food but shit on the feeder. They think these birds should develop manners and be grateful because they are feeding them the (how do birds know) finest grains and find another place to drop. Did you know that birds pee and poop at the same time? The smooth white goop is the urine, and the center dark mass sometimes granular but smells like a beef soup is the feces.

Enough about birds back to “rodent rumors”
Many think there are three “types” of squirrels - the flying squirrel the tree squirrel and the ground squirrel. But in fact there is over 14 different types of squirrel most of which can be found in the northeast part of the United States. Along with the three listed above there is the Rock, High Grass, Low Grass and the 5 toed squirrel. This is not to be confused with the “species”. There are over 100-120 in Rhode Island alone.

Most squirrels eat raw meat and sometimes fish not nuts, seeds, grain, and fruit like you see on TV cartoons. I was surprised by the amount of fish they eat because it was thought that they were poor swimmers. The fact is squirrels are better swimmers then they are climbers.