Frazz by Jef Mallett for October 24, 2015

To paraphrase “Charlie’s Aunt”, the banking industry was first imported from Brazil; that’s where all the nuts come from.

This explains why bankers act so squirrelly when you ask for an explanation of their fees.

That’s not an answer, how do the squirrels know where any stash is?

They don’t remember. They dig based on search and smell.

Those definitely look like Michigan squirrels

Yep, and the customer can’t be out of money, they still have checks left. Nasty, rotten, “greedy” banks. It’s all their fault that people don’t know how to budget or spend correctly (wisely).

Not quite the perfect analogy, Jef—bankers would be squirrels who don’t bury any nuts of their own, just dig up the nuts buried by other squirrels.

A few years ago a couple of college students decided to find out how many nuts a squirrel remembered that he/she had hidden. They got some volunteers and watched one squirrel (on campus) and discovered that they remember about half.Thats quite remarkable when you consider how many nuts a squirrel hides away.The survey was complicated by the discovery that when a squirrel discovers that another squirrel is steeling his nuts, he/she will start to pretend to hide his nut in several places.And, doesn’t matter if the squirrel is pretending to hide them, or not, they still remember where about half of them are.

The squirrels in my yard are so lazy, they just dig the hole and wait for the acorn or pecan to drop, or wash when we have rain, into it.

Black squirrels are a variety of grey squirrels and they do breed with each other. Kent State has black squirrels on campus (I believe originally brought from Ontario) and they have spread. I have seen them at my house which is about 15 miles from Kent. Some do look to be a darker shade of grey. The only other place I have seen them is eastern Ontario. I don’t think that they will breed with fox squirrels, but could be wrong.

In my neighbourhood, there is mostly black squirrels, with a few odd grey squirrels. For a while, there a few of the black squirrels that showed up with some white markings – more irregular than the stripes of a skunk, but they freaked out a number of people.

One day I watched a squirrel solve a physics problem. It was busily scarfing seeds in my bird feeder when it (and I) suddenly saw movement below. A neighborhood cat had crept up and had zeroed in on it, tail twitching in readiness. The squirrel stopped eating, estimated the distance from the feeder to the fence. The cat had already figured it was too far a leap for the squirrel. Desperation raised the squirrel’s adrenaline level, and it made a giant leap. It missed the top of the fence just as the cat raced for it. The squirrel scrabbled desperately, managed to get a foothold on one of the wire links, and vaulted to the top of the fence and onto a nearby tree on the other side. Then it had the nerve to turn and jeer at the frustrated cat. Around here we just have the little gray pests.

There was an albino squirrel that lived a few blocks away from my old house. I would see it from time to time while out walking.

Your nuts, milord! (The Two Ronnies)