One of the longest tenured of our mammalian neighbours is the Red Squirrel. It is probably the one I am most familar with as well, having encountered them in both the country and occassionally in the city since I moved west, They had been replaced by the larger Eastern Grey Squirrel in Sounthern Ontario where I grew up. In our Edmonton apartment one claimed the spruce tree next to the window of our third floor apartment and chattered at us when we entered the room. In one archaeological field camp one would drop a spruce cone 30 or more feet unto the corrugated plastic roof of the outhouse, which sounds like a gunshot in the narrow space. At the cabin the one moved in one year and began to build a nest at the peak of the roof in the kitchen. We have also had a number of encounters with them in the outhouse which started when they attempted to fill it with mushrooms, spruce cones being in short supply in the aspen parklands. They also go after the young birds and we suspect they are responsible for the disappearance of the robin nestlings from the ledge behind the cabin. One also likes to come up on the porch in the early morning and proclaim its mastery of the territory. They also have the occasional dustup with somewhat mystified neighbours unaware of their status.
"With an host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows,
I summoned am to a tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end:
Methinks it is no journey.? "
from Tom O’Bedlam
Coming thru.
Excuse me, do you know who I am?
I am bigger then I look you know.
Okay the sneak attack.
Attack from the rear, he suspects nothing!
My rock.
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