squirrel, wildlife, nature, archon, pob, creativecoin, waivio, ecency, neoxian
We have two species of squirrel in our garden here in Thailand, the grey-bellied squirrel, which does everything it can to avoid setting a foot on the ground, and the Indochinese ground squirrel, which, as it's name suggests, spends most of its time scampering around at ground-level. However, the ground squirrels do climb upwards to nest in trees or buildings and also, given what I have witnessed recently, to store food.
I have an old compost bucket that I drain water through to make compost tea for any plants that look like they could do with a boost. Currently, it is full of mango seeds from the wonderful crop of little mangoes we had a few months back. Our local ground squirrels have been raiding this bucket and taking the seeds away to gnaw out the nourishment. They are slowly working their way through the bucket but there are still plenty of seeds left.
Recently I noticed that rather than sit down somewhere nearby to nibble a stolen seed as usually happens, sometimes a squirrel carries it off elsewhere. A little bit of snooping around and I found that they were climbing onto the roof of an outbuilding and from there leaping across onto the house roof. As you can see in the photos, a while back I put up some netting to try to prevent either species of squirrel doing this as I didn't want them getting into our roofspace. It worked for a while but then the squirrels found they could jump onto the netting and climb over it. Doing this then pulled the net down just enough that with effort they can just leap over the net in one bound. It's quite impressive to watch, and these flying squirrels are making a mockery of their usual reputation of staying on the ground. I haven't gotten around to finding a better barrier system to keep them off the roof yet.
The squirrels already have recent young with them and I'm pretty sure they are not going up there to raise another brood yet so I suspect they are storing the mango seeds somewhere in our roofspace for leaner times.
With effort I managed to find the hole that they have chewed to actually get into the roofspace but the nature of the construction makes it impossible for me to find their store from the inside. This hole is in an awkward place but I managed to wedge a camera nearby but never caught any squirrels using it, only a gecko!
I now worry that if I do manage to stop the squirrels getting onto (and into) our roof, we might find we get mango trees sprouting out between the tiles!
You need some cats
Ha! I MUCH prefer the squirrels whatever they get up to!
😼
AWWWW... 😀🙏 we have squirrels in our yards too!... They are such adorable vandals!... I've already lost the battle with them, I can't even yell at them to try and scare them away. Luckily our cats scare them a bit and keep them from doing too much wrong, although I've never seen my cats get close enough to catch them (luckily)... But our squirrels here eat everything!... They even bore into avocados 🥑to eat the seeds while the fruit is still on the tree!... And yes, they certainly love mango seeds!... The one you showed us today in your article is adorable and seems to keep very busy!... I know they can be a little naughty, but they are adorable!
Thanks for sharing @hadrianwild friend!
🐿 👍
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Thank you. Yes, they are adorable. I'm not really complaining about them. I'm sure I could stop them them getting into the roof if I wasn't so half-hearted about it!
These squirrels are incredibly determined, finding ways around every obstacle you put in place. The part about them leaping onto the netting and still making it onto the roof shows just how persistent they can be. If they really are stashing mango seeds up there, it would be quite something to see a little mango grove trying to sprout from between the tiles one day.
Yes, I am torn between frustration and admiration at their antics but the more I get to know them the more I enjoy them.
Maybe you will have a rooftop mango tree garden. :)
It's funny (but not ha ha) how once some critters make up their mind where they want to go, it's really hard to stop them.
Yeah, in some ways it's quite an endearing habit
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