Squirrels and radicchio

Adaptable local wildlife seem to be quite happy eating 'local' and enjoying the delicacies that I provide for them.

Our woodchuck (quite at home in the brush pile way back towards the woods) is feasting on tromboncino squash leaves, much to my annoyance, but at least s/he doesn't like tomatoes, eggplant, or yard-long beans. Fortunately, there's so much other summer squash this year, thanks to the relative absence of squash vine borers, I can't really complain. (Uh, I do keep setting my Havahart trap, but this woodchuck is much too canny to think that's inviting, even with Chuckster bait).

To my amazement this evening, though, I saw a squirrel (again) scampering off down the side fence with a huge radicchio leaf in (presumably her) mouth. She stopped, and started nibbling, but when I came closer, ran off with her prize.

I didn't have my camera, but there was definite evidence last year, and the year before that, I saw this (nursing) female squirrel enjoying a radicchio leaf in about the same spot. Quite remarkable.

Squirrels! Hrmmph!

Sitting at my computer this morning, a furry blur caught my eye. On top of one of the feeders. One with a squirrel baffle. Hhrmph. I took a closer look.

But, it was hard to be too annoyed. This rascal had suspended him/herself from the top of the feeder and was munching away. Quite amazing.

I have no idea how it had managed to get there -- maybe leapfrogging across the tops of the other feeders from the nearby dogwood? My gardening companion thinks that it probably leaped down from the big Southern red oak -- this feeder used to be in the open, but things are growing well this year.

I mean, really -- this squirrel was dangling there for ages chowing down, before I went outside and it nimbly scampered up the thistle feeder to leap into the dogwood.