Gray Squirrel Thermometer

[MrWhoopee]

As I drive down the road into our small mountain neighborhood in the comfort of my air-conditioned car, I get a pretty good picture of how hot it is outside by how many gray squirrels are sprawled on the pavement. They're not road-kill, they jump up and run as I approach. They're just lying on their bellies with their legs spread out, getting maximum contact with the asphalt. I assume that, much like a dog, they are dissipating heat into the relatively cool pavement. Unfortunately, the gray squirrels are programmed to execute evasive maneuvers as they flee. This may work when being pursued by a predator, but is not advisable when trying to avoid a car. Once clear of the road, they are likely to reverse direction and run right back in front of the car, thereby becoming that which they were trying to avoid. My favorites, the Douglas squirrels, are not similarly programmed and are rarely hit.

Today is a five squirrel day, they all survived.

 

[RJSakowski]

In the fall, we are just as likely to see snakes lying on the road, sucking up heat from the asphalt.

 

[Tozguy]

There are so many grey squirrels that get squished on our road it makes me wonder how they survive as a species. Black squirrels are starting to show up more and more. We are rolling in acorns most of the year so there will always be squirrrels around. The crows do well eating roadkill. There are several crows nests in the big pines in the neighbourhood. At least the wild rabbits and snakes stay off the road.

 

[Nutfarmer]

I am surprised the hawks aren't having a field day. A squirrel out in the open around the orchard is fair game for a hawk. It's the ground squirrels that cause most of the damage in the orchards. What is fun to watch is when we disc open ground in the spring. It's a feeding frenzy for all the hawks catching the critters the disc spooks. On a good day there can be as many as a dozen circling over head looking for an easy meal. Sometimes there's even a coyote that will join in.

 

[mmcmdl]

Not a squirrel gets by without the 3 Shelties seeing it and keeping me awake during the day . Our powerlines are the squirrels interstate highways , those little bistards !

 

[rwm]

Kind of like a 3 dog night.
R

 

[markba633csi]

Reminds me of the movie "Rat Race"
"you should have bought a squirrel"

 

[RJSakowski]

I have tremendous respect for gray squirrels. As a teenager, I used to hunt them and a good portion of out fall and winter diet was squirrel. They are wiley critters and maneuvering them to where you could get a clean shot took a great deal of patience. They will run up a tree and down the back side and you can waste a lot of time waiting for one to show itself when in fact they are far away.

Studies have shown that they will recover up to 60% of the more than 5,000 nuts that they bury each year, locating them under six inches of snow. I have trouble remembering where I put the wrench I was using five minutes ago. If you watch them navigating the tree tops, they will take complex routes to get from point A to point B, very seldom having to backtrack. They are quick to learn how to overcome obstacles, as anyone with a bird feeder will attest.

My only issue with them is that they have decided in recent years that my buildings were ideal places for their nests. Before we reoofed our house, they managed to chew an entry hole in the soffit and had a raceway around the entire perimeter of the house. Replacing the soffit and facia solved that problem. They have nests on the barn though and the open structure of the barn makes it impossible to keep them out so we just deal with it.
I have threatened to take up hunting them again. My wife is from the UK and she has never had squirrel stew and is very reluctant to try it. Apparently, hunting gray squirrels in the UK isn't done. Funny, because they are an exotic and are driving out the indigenous red squirrels. As a result, they tend to be very tame and my wife was surprised that I was able to call then up to a few feet from us.

We will seldom see a dead squirrel on the road although that may be due to the ever present turkey vultures looking for a quick meal. I have only hit one in the hundreds of thousands of back road driving. I have had them run under the vehicle and reverse course while underneath.

 

[Nogoingback]

Studies have shown that they will recover up to 60% of the more than 5,000 nuts that they bury each year, locating them under six inches of snow. I have trouble remembering where I put the wrench I was using five minutes ago.

 

[MrWhoopee]

I am surprised the hawks aren't having a field day. A squirrel out in the open around the orchard is fair game for a hawk. It's the ground squirrels that cause most of the damage in the orchards. What is fun to watch is when we disc open ground in the spring. It's a feeding frenzy for all the hawks catching the critters the disc spooks. On a good day there can be as many as a dozen circling over head looking for an easy meal. Sometimes there's even a coyote that will join in.

For some reason we don't have that many hawks up here. Ospreys and the occasional bald eagle, but few hawks. They seem to like it down lower where there is less tree cover. Down in the valley I've watched the frenzy after the alfalfa is mowed. The ground squirrels are used to having the cover and suddenly it's gone. Red-tails circling overhead like vultures with a few sitting on the ground, just making a quick hop when a victim pops up. Ground squirrels aren't true squirrels, they're rodents and deserve to be eaten.