It's Me, Your Neighborhood Squirrel

Greetings neighbor! Allow me to introduce myself, I am one of the squirrels from the park across the street. Don't worry about which one–I know you can't tell us apart anyway.

But for the record, I'm an eastern fox squirrel, with the hilarious scientific name, Sciurus niger. It's funny to me because it sounds like "scurry-us", and we are always scurrying–you have to scurry if you want to survive in the wild!

That's right, even though to you I'm just an adorable rodent in your peaceful local greenspace, I'm actually out here every day fighting for survival!

I've got no complaints–how could I? This is the only life I know, and squirrels aren't much for deep contemplation about alternative universes anyway. But I will say this, I don't much care for your dog. Boy, I wish this park had stricter leash laws. Like, you'd have to clean up dog poop for a month if you get caught! Surviving in the wild is slightly harder with an obnoxious breedadoodle constantly chasing you up a tree!

Not that dogs are serious predators–they rarely catch one of us. But still! Every time some doofus corgi (that'd get its butt kicked by a raccoon) runs after me, it interrupts my foraging time!

And foraging time, although it's my favorite activity in all of squirreldom, is a lot of hard work!

But yeah, I guess other than foraging and avoiding real predators (like Cooper's hawks), the rest of our time is spent... well—you know there's only so many things we wild animals do with our time.

Ahem–

In regards to squirrel reproduction, we aren't necessarily a species to admire. At least the males, who don't really do jack squat for the kids. Squirrel moms do their best, but growing up in the wild can be dangerous!

It sounds kinda funny to think of your local park as the wild, doesn't it?

Well—all that word means is the place where animals live. Technically, this is both your neighborhood and your habitat. But it's not just yours, or just mine either. In fact, there's all sorts of different organisms that live here: birds, beetles, worms, ants, and slugs. Plus all the plant and fungal and protozoal and bacterial (+/- viral) life that you can't even see!

Believe it or not, I'm actually on the larger size for animals in this park. It wasn't always that way, but a population of bears just isn't sustainable in most suburbs. Most of the animals here are tiny and inconspicuous. I have to admit it, I'm guilty of ignoring the little guys and tend to just focus on the animals that are most obvious during the day, when I'm active.

Which pretty much means crows.

We've got a collegial relationship, us squirrels and crows. Sure, if a squirrel gets run over (it's so hard to decide which way to go!), crows'll help themselves to our flattened carcass. But we rarely fight, even though we use a lot of the same resources.

And that's just fine with me.

I like it here–I'm happy to be alive. I don't want to fight anybody (except, sometimes during breeding season, I do get unusually angry at most other squirrels I come across). So thank you for leashing up your dog, driving carefully, and sparing us the peanuts (it seems counterintuitive, I know, but it's actually not the best for us long-term. Seriously, thank you for your kind intentions but please stop!).

It's lovely to have you as neighbors, and I appreciate you keeping this nice park here for us to live and die and undertake our greatest purpose in life: being a squirrel

This wild life is precious.