My neighbourhood has a very dense squirrel population, they are always trying to make a new nest somewhere. We store our kayaks under the extended roof on one side of my shop, and last fall one started using our kayaks for storing walnuts and pinecones. We chased him (maybe her) out of there and collected about 10 gallons of walnuts. The next day while I was outside sorting the walnuts he stood on the bow of one of the kayaks and gave me a severe scolding. Within another day or two he started to build a new nest in the covered area under the eaves on the opposite side of my shop where I keep my ladders and scaffold planks. I chased him out of there before he could get too comfortable, he then moved on to my woodshed. I kind of felt sorry for stealing all his walnuts out of the kayaks that he’d worked so hard to collect, so I left him alone in the woodshed for a while. After about a week or two I noticed he must have stacked 2 pinecones for every chunk of firewood I had in there, so I said enough was enough and got my son to un-stack the wood down to his nest. About half way down (about the 4 ft level) we found his little round ball of a nest, made of grass clippings. Now here’s the funny part, inside the nest he had a companion,,,,,, it was a small stuffed bunny rabbit. It wasn’t part of the nesting material, it was in the hollowed out area right inside the nest where the squirrel slept. Well we all had a good laugh and set the little bunny on the chopping block next to the wood pile. The rest of the nesting material and the pinecones we tossed into a pile that I intended to burn. We then head out for that day for some wood cutting and came back about 4 hours later. Low and behold, when we returned, the bunny was gone. The little bugger had taken the bunny right away to wherever he decided to start building his new nest, which I’m pretty sure was in the attic of the neighbour’s house.
I like having the squirrels around and couldn’t bring myself to kill them even if they are a little messy. Packrats or mice are another matter, I kill them first chance I get.
