Cheeky Squirrel

In the time that I spend watching the bees, I observe many things in my backyard that I probably wouldn't otherwise. One of those things is the cheeky resident squirrel. She is loud, flamboyant, and a bit of a bully. I've seen her run right up to a morning dove and dare it to hold it's post on the fence. Today, she calmly walked across the fence on the north west side of the yard, stopped for a moment (a long moment that made me wonder what she was thinking about), and then suddenly shot across two yards of fence so quickly that I thought she flew. Then she ran along the south fence, jumped into the pine tree and launched into a long series of barks followed by chatter with each syllable punctuated by a sharp jerk of her tail. She must have gone on like that for five minutes. Then she started edging toward me, all the while barking and swishing her tail. She stopped for a moment and looked at me. Then she looked over into the neighbor's yard and told them some long drawn out tale--probably about the human who had the audacity to sit on a hammock in her yard. Finally, she tried staring me down--I very seriously thought that she was going to jump on my face.

Normally, I see her jump from the pine tree onto the ornamental tree in the middle of the yard and then onto the eucalyptus on the north east side of the yard. I wondered if she wanted to go across the hammock, so I moved and gave her the right of way, fearing that I would lose an eye if I didn't. Next thing I knew, she was jumping from tree to tree as normal.

I found a big nut under the hammock yesterday--I think it is from one of the palm trees in the neighborhood. I also saw a squirrel (might have been her) run across the yard with a similar nut. Maybe the nut under the hammock was hers and she was upset that I was camped out over her treasure. Who knows?

I also saw a hummingbird. It landed on the tree above the bee hive, flew down to where the chicken waterer is, had a look in the hive and then flew off. I wasn't sure if he was considering having a drink or just thought that my bees looked like tasty little bits of protein.