Do They Even Dream...

It's a sign of approaching fall. The squirrels at my house are eating pine cones and their seeds. Maybe they will eat pine cones all year long but for some reason I notice the remains of their activity on the ground more this time of year. 

My granddaughter, Parker likes to see squirrels. When she was younger, in an effort to get her to alert to the natural world when a squirrel would appear everyone tried to show her the creature by shouting "squirrel, squirrel." Now big enough to spot them herself she thinks the name of the critter is squirrel squirrel. Whenever I see a squirrel I say to myself "there's old squirrel squirrel." You probably think, "that guy does not have much to say to himself." You might be right.   

I wonder if, in the course of pursuing squirrel business, the squirrel checks the pine cones periodically  to see if they are ripe. Kind of like when I check to see if the mail or the newspaper has arrived. Sometimes I know damn well it has not but I look anyway. 

Apparently squirrels will eat the green or the dry brown cones. I know some of ya'll are doing good research on the latest Covid cure this morning but I found out that squirrels eat probably three quarters of the pine seeds produced by the forest each year and that's a good thing because I don't want that many pines growing up in my yard. I also found that the green cones are easier to shuck, they eat the seed and the cone and that with a little prep work the squirrels will prepare the cones for winter storage so they keep better but I have not seen evidence of that around here.

The evidence of squirrel feeding in my photo is at the base of a large oak tree. The pine tree is fifty feet away. The squirrels apparently pick the cones from the pine, transport them to the oak and sit there to eat them. Which tree is best? When I was a child there were pear trees in my mom's yard that she made the best pear pies from and also pears growing in our neighbors yard. They got ripe about this time each year and sometimes while playing in my backyard a pear would come crashing through the foliage of a large, tall oak to the ground. I was at first amazed that a pear came off the oak but I realized that the squirrel responsible was sitting up there hidden in the tree. As tasty those pear pies were I imagined him to be sad after the work of carrying the huge pear high in the branches that he dropped it.     

I did some of this wondering aloud about all what a squirrel thinks and how he approaches his business to my wife. She said I was attributing human behavioral characteristics to an animal. As a rhetorical question she asked, "Do squirrels dream of electric sheep?"