Befriending Our Wild and Fuzzy Neighbors

Cindy La Ferle

We’ve worked hard to exile ourselves from nature, yet we end up longing for what we’ve lost:  a sense of connectedness. – Diane Ackerman

 As long as I’ve tended a garden, I’ve done battle with squirrels and lost most of the skirmishes.  Squirrels have pilfered my prettiest container gardens, ripping out impatiens and petunias and leaving them for dead on the patio.  Not stopping there, the furry little pirates habitually bury their acorns in my perennial beds and shoplift my daffodil bulbs.

Several years ago, I read in Country Living that squirrels have relatively large brains for such small rodents, which might explain how they manage to outwit your best attempts to keep them out of the birdfeeder.

So, I was just about ready to strangle them all – until I met Willie.

My family’s personal relationship with Willie began this spring over a jar of honey- roasted peanuts.  Relaxing on our patio one weekend, my husband Doug, absentmindedly tossed a handful of nuts to some squirrels playing in the yard.  Sniffing an opportunity, Willie was the smartest in the bunch and began returning daily for the next windfall.

In my initial ignorance of squirrel anatomy, I named Willie after a male hamster I owned as a child.  By the time Doug got a closer look at Willie’s undercarriage, which proved beyond a doubt that Willie was capable of nursing a full litter of baby squirrels, it was too late.  To us, Willie was a “he” and we couldn’t quite shake the pronoun.

Doug was the first to train Willie to take peanuts from his hand and soon the whole family was charmed.  Word traveled quickly through the neighborhood, too, making Willie a local celebrity.  He was even featured in a photo project for my son's high school French class.

Genius that he is, Willie also discovered where I write every morning.  Leaping onto the Rose of Sharon bush next to my study window, he’ll show up routinely at 10:30.  Once he makes eye contact through the window, he zips to a nearby garden bench and waits for me to meet him with a jar of nuts.  And this little guy knows how to woo me.  He’ll sit right next to me on the bench while he nibbles, holding his treat with monkey-like fingers and gazing back at me with bright black eyes.

I’ve asked myself why I find this so entertaining; why I’d bother befriending a nervy little rodent when I have much bigger chores on my list.  As naturalist and author, Diane Ackerman suggests, I suppose it has something to do with "a longing to reconnect with the natural world."  Backyard animals like Willie are, in a way, a living link to that world.  Surfing the Web, I found several educational sites detailing everything you’d ever want to know about squirrels, and then some.  I learned that Willie is a fox squirrel, the largest of the arboreal (tree) squirrels.  Since wildlife in the suburbs is fraught with peril, fox squirrels rarely live past seven years.  (Who can predict when a random BMW might plow into one of the daredevils crossing the boulevard?)  

Which is why I was so upset last week when I spotted a dead fox squirrel near the curb, just a few yards away from the silver maple that Willie calls home.  Suddenly, road kill wasn’t just a term for anonymous casualties.

But thank heaven for small miracles.  Willie returned promptly at 10:30 the next morning for his daily ration of nuts, reminding me once again that it doesn’t take much to make my day. 

Cindy La Ferle writes from Royal Oak, MI, where she teaches writing workshops.  Her new award-winning essay collection, Writing Home, is available in bookstores or on amazon.com.  For more information, visit Cindy's Home Office and blog: www.laferle.com