Happy Squirrel Appreciation Day!

Danielle Brigida has a great article on the National Wildlife magazine site celebrating Squirrel Appreciation Day. I called Doug Inkley, National Wildlife Federation senior scientist & knower of all things wildlife, and asked if he had any interesting squirrel tidbits to add.

“Squirrels, huh?” Doug replied with reluctance. “I’m kind of infamous for that, you know.”

“How could someone be infamous for anything related to squirrels?” I asked.

“Years back back a reporter with the Washington Post called. She said she was doing an article on how people were noticing more squirrels were getting hit by cars. I talked to her for what must’ve been 20 minutes about the biology & science behind it. Then at the end, I made some dumb joke like, ‘And hey, y’know, squirrels just aren’t fast enough’,” Doug said.

“Well, she titles the article ‘Kamikaze Squirrels,’ and guess which quote she used?” Doug sighed. “I thought I was gonna get fired.”

Doug said he didn’t have any Secret Lives of Squirrels-type revelations to share. Instead, he wanted to pass along this video for his fellow bird watchers out there to have a laugh at the lengths those clever squirrels will go to swipe a free meal: