Off the Mark by Mark Parisi for May 24, 2020

The one on it’s hindlegs on top of the bush looks like a rat.

Note the dashes between the squirrels. That’s one squirrel if you missed them.

American Ninja, Furrier.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirrels. There should’ve been Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirrels. Living inside a secret tree house headquarters or something.

He earned that bird seed…

That dog needs to go on diet, looks like he can barely jump.

It is easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle…than to build a squirrel proof bird feeder

I never brake for squirrels. I might cause an accident. I do know that in a collision between a car and a squirrel, that the car is undamaged. Besides, if you brake, the squirrel will only reverse direction and run back to get hit anyway.

While I know they are God’s creatures and I do appreciate the minor role they play in the propagation of trees; it’s not like they are an endangered species. They are not worth the risk of injuring myself. I do hope that if it does happen (about once every 10 years), it’s a “clean kill.” Besides roadkill is part of the food chain for other animals.

We hung a series of big shallow bowls over our feeder which is hung from a tree. For the most part it works but we see squirrels perched over the contraption on the branch, studying how to get down and, sometimes, they beat it! Fun to see.

That’s parkour, not ninja!

Disguising a bird feeder as a bird house, you gotta do a lot better than that.

Onto stage Three!

Unlike other squirrels?

Squirrels can employ real ingenuity sometimes. I once watched one looking back and forth between a feeder that was equipped with a squirrel-proof skirt on its base and a nearby hemlock. When it was done sizing things up, it climbed the tree and went out on the limb that came closest to the feeder. It couldn’t make the leap because the limb wasn’t stable enough on its far end, but it knew it was possible enough to try out.