It’s beginning to look a lot like… Spring?

You can buy this sign here.
Tell me it isn't AWESOME!

On our little tiny lot, we have opossums, raccoons, but mostly, our backyard is a squirrel sanctuary.  We live in a semi-urban area and there are not a lot of forest areas for them to hang out.  Our yard has several big trees with a lot of places to hide stuff and at least a dozen squirrels have made it their home.  For the most part, they do their thing while we do our own.  On occasion, they’ll drop things on my head (I’m sure it’s an accident… I hope), they’ll tease Lola, the Chihuahua, while she barks like a psychotic, and I have gotten a face full of squirrel butt when one of the darlings misjudged the strength of a branch that was just above my head… but like I said, we live in semi-harmony most of the time.

The greater Chicagoland area is having unseasonably warm weather right now.  That seems to be confusing the local wildlife a bit.  Today I’ve already caught two squirrels sexing it up on our garage roof, but they’re also taking advantage of the nice weather to get more food.  This has not gone unnoticed by the neighborhood’s domesticated animal population, which are always on the lookout for scraps.

So I was out on our back porch watching the comings and goings of the critters that frequent our yard and all of the sudden every squirrel in the yard began rushing the large tree at the edge of our lot.  They were coming from everywhere… trees, fences, ground.  I suddenly thought I should be taking cover because it was clearly a signal of a cataclysmic event.  Then I heard the howl…

It seems that one of the neighbor’s cats had decided to climb a tree to look in their squirrel houses for food.  He hit the jackpot about 30 feet off the ground in the largest tree of the yard.  I’m not sure if he got anything out of their nest, but he was an unwelcome visitor.  They swarmed him like the miners from Galaxy Quest (P.S. If you haven’t seen this movie – WATCH IT).  They chased him down the tree with squeals and hissing.  He hopped the fence and ran to a garbage can to collect his kitty thoughts.  I’m hoping the lesson he learned is that YOU DON’T MESS WITH SQUIRRELS!

The lesson I learned is that, while they may be cute and fuzzy, they are mean little buggers that will turn on you like a bad tuna sandwich.  Consider me and the dogs warned.