A couple weeks ago we were taking our newborn baby for his first walk. We were pushing his stroller down a one-lane road through a thick Bainbridge forest when it happened. Thump!
“Ouch,” I said, as something bounced off my head and fell to the ground. I looked up, rubbing my head, searching for the bombardier. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was up high in a tree, probably chuckling to himself.
I’m referring to the illustrious Douglas squirrel. Douglas squirrels, which I call Dougies, are the little brown squirrels that scold us on our decks, chase each other around tree trunks, and acrobatically steal treats from our bird feeders.
I’ve heard people call them squirrels on crack because of their boundless energy. I really love the little guys.
Every year in the late summer, they take to the tree tops for one of my favorite annual rituals: The Great Pine Cone Harvest.
Have you ever been standing in your yard or taking a walk and heard an endless pitter-patter of pine cones hitting the ground?
The first time I noticed this in my yard, I was dumbfounded because all of the pine cones that were falling out of the tree were still green.
I scanned the tree with my binoculars and saw an amazing high-wire act. Way up in the top of this Douglas fir tree, probably 80 feet up, was a Dougie hard at work.
Starting at the trunk, he’d work his way out to the very end of each branch as it swayed in the wind.
Along the way, he’d cut off pine cones, causing a literal rain of cones on the ground below. Eventually he ran down the trunk and set to the task of storing some of those pine cones in secret cubbyholes to supplement his winter food.
It has possibly been a record year for squirrel patients at West Sound Wildlife. We’ve had somewhere north of 50 squirrels this year, most of them orphans whose parents were killed by pets.
When they are not sleeping in little piles of warm squirrelness, they are fed a special formula through a syringe. After being fed, our wonderful volunteers have the pleasure of “stimulating” them so that they will pee and whatnot before going back to sleep.
I used to think that getting peed on by a squirrel at 9 a.m. was one of the finer joys in life. But I now understand that it doesn’t hold a candle to getting peed on by a human baby.
Most people don’t know that we actually have three species of squirrels that live on Bainbridge: Dougies; grey squirrels; and the elusive and fascinating Northern flying squirrel.
Flying squirrels don’t actually fly, of course. Instead, they have large flaps of skin on each side between their legs that let them glide.
We have a flying squirrel patient in right now, and she is one heck of an escape artist. Many times when we open her wire cage to care for her, she bunches up her little legs and springs into the air. Then the hunt is on as we try to catch her in a net as she jumps and glides about the room.
I suppose I’ll learn in a year or so that this is typical behavior for a juvenile of any species. Hopefully I won’t have to use a net with my boy.
Another annual activity that squirrels undertake in preparation for winter is trying to sneak into our attics or basements to secure themselves a warm chateau. Now is a fine time for you to inspect your house and close up any openings through which a squirrel could squeeze.
Just make sure there are no squirrels already inside before you close up the hole. If you do have or come to have any squirrel tenants, please feel free to call us so we can give you advice on how to evict them humanely (206-855-9057).
The Great Pine Cone Harvest is done this year. I hope it was successful and will see the Dougies through another winter.
Maybe during next year’s harvest, my then 1-year old son will get nailed by a pine cone. Heck, he’ll probably deserve it by then.
Kol Medina is executive director of the West Sound Wildlife Shelter.
