Squirrel stores thousands of nuts inside man's parked truck
local12.com
local12.com
Many years ago a mouse built a nest in one of the heating vents of my car. He lived there peacefully until I went on a climbing trip with friends in the Olympics. We were driving up a steep dirt road to the trailhead, and I turned on the heating to help cool the engine a bit. At some point it got too hot. The mouse jumped out of the vent onto the dashboard of the car to get some fresh air.
It's hard to say who was more surprised: the mouse or the humans. We looked at him in stunned silence. He looked back. Nobody moved for what seemed like about a minute, thought it was probably more like a few seconds. Eventually one of my friends had the presence of mind to grab him and gently drop him out of the window into the bushes at the side of the road.
Then we all laughed hysterically for about 10 minutes. For the rest of the trip you just had to say "the mouse..." and it started all over again. Live well, little mouse!
For real alpinism you want the North Cascades, e.g., Boston Basin/T-Bone Ridge or Mount Washington. Nowadays I mostly do randonee skiing, in which case Rainier, Baker, and Adams are fine destinations with world class descents.
I have a Prius with solar cells on the roof which power a fan keeping the passenger compartment from getting too stifling while parked in the sun. An adventurous mouse exploring the engine went took a fateful fall and got shredded by that fan. Cost me several hundred dollars to get everything taken apart and cleaned, and I'm sure the tech earned that money.
the _extremely_ well qualified support personnel had to finally say they weren't going to spend any more days washing rat bits off module boards.
That's why you're never supposed to vacuum rodent poop. Get it slight wet and wipe it off.
Rabbits. Vehicle wiring. Problems. https://denverite.com/2016/11/02/denver-airport-rabbits-eat-...
Who would ever imagine that their car won't start because a rabbit tested the edibility of some wiring.
This is a widespread problem in Germany, not with rabbits, but with martens. It is especially dangerous when they get a taste for the brake hoses.
Surely not martins, the birds...
But yes, many ground creatures (including human babies) test the edibility of virtually anything by chewing and tasting it :D.
We turned a corner around one of the Dougs and there was a big Pine Marten scrambling up the bole of the tree, chasing squirrel for lunch. Mystery solved!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beech_marten
Haunting people making noise at night in old houses is also a common hobby (but somebody must to run after the yummy mice).
There are super-sonic devices to be installed in the engine bay to shoo them.
You can use a dictionary or encyclopedia for word definitions. I like the Oxford for its quality, and Wikipedia for its breadth.
• https://lexico.com/definition/marten
User-friendly browsers like Opera 12 and Firefox have features to turn a form or search result into a reusable template that can be triggered with a shortcut from the address bar. I habitually make use of this for looking up definitions.
If you care to take the acquisition of skills to the 95th percentile and beyond, measured against the general population, then the material at Fravia's Searchlores (deliberately not linked) will do that.
Guessing that “martens” is the plural of “marten” also works fine.
I think many would find that easier.
Toyota was sued over the issue but the suit was dismissed.
https://carbuzz.com/news/angry-toyota-owners-sue-again-over-...
They tunnel into beehives and have waged war on my NAS.
I recommend this thing for rodents - they are insanely powerful.
Here in the desert west of the USA I use the old half-full bucket of water trick. No swiveling cylinder nor bait needed; because it's dry here the water is the bait. And no bloody mess to clean up.
At least in terms of wildlife, you're not going to escape this. Stapleton was just too small and getting surrounded by city. If you're building a replacement and have access to land, it makes sense to have a lot of it. At 50+ square miles, you're going to have some wildlife interactions almost regardless of where it is.
Took 6 months to get the thing working again.
In this case I think what happened is the nest more or less was incinerated from the heat of the engine. Hopefully that would have killed anything that would have been aerosolized.
however, mice carry around a lot of other biohazards. if it happens again I would say google the disposal process, and/or check the CDC's reference material for it.
For one, they seem to love roughhousing. Everyone has seen videos of squirrels being flung off of bird feeders by anti-squirrel devices, yet they love to come back for more. They'll go through great lengths just to get a single peanut, they're really daring too, but they're not stupid. My parents for a while constructed a squirrel obstacle course in their backyard and at first the squirrels are skeptical; they'll investigate, back off, come back and get a little closer, back off again until they get comfortable and then they figure it out. There's an unused dog-door at my parents' house and I suggested they extend part of their squirrel maze into their house through it. It was such a good idea they actually did it, and the squirrels did indeed come all the way into the house! They must have reasoned at some level that because those maze structures led to peanuts in the past that there could be a peanut inside the house where the maze lead. Of course this also lead birds like scrub jays observing the squirrels and entering the house as well!
For creatures that are relatively vulnerable to predators, they will relax out in the open in really cartoonish ways. It's humorous when they lie on the edge of a fence with their limbs dangling over both sides.
Periodically, my parents have to trim the pods off their palm trees which are quite tall now. Many of those peanuts the squirrels won from the obstacle course ended up at the top of those palms. It almost seems excessive given the amount of energy they seem to expend getting that food.
What place did they come from that didn't have squirrels? I thought they're native to pretty much any place that isn't Australia or the poles.
Anyone have any suggestions?
[1] https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/pages/a117ced5-9...
We have a squirrel in our neighborhood that my wife and kids started leaving nuts out for. Within a few weeks, she would show up at the back door to wait for a handout. Now she has basically no fear of us. She'll take nuts from the kids' hands. She'll come right up to you, which is alarming if you're just trying to leave the house and don't actually have food on you. We have a Dutch door which we tend to leave open, and she's jumped onto the ledge before. It's probably only a matter of time before she comes all the way in the house, the cats notice, and all hell breaks loose.
A Canadian public-health Web site says although deer mice are the primary carrier of hantavirus, "all rodents including squirrels, rats, chipmunks and other kinds of mice should be treated as if they might carry the virus."
They don't have any particular protocols around working with local gray squirrels, so I interpret that to mean that there is little risk. There were only 243 cases of bubonic plague globally in 2018. According to the CDC, there are no known cases of hantavirus from squirrels. The only rodent species that have been seen to harbor it are deer mouse, white-footed mouse, rice rat, and cotton rat. (Neither of the latter are rat species you are likely to encounter, which are Norway and roof rats.)
"<common cute urban animal> causes <horrific thing>" is a very pervasive meme because it combines a familiar thing we're drawn to with a high risk negative outcome. That means the meme will spread dramatically out of proportion with its actual likelihood.
By the way, the squirrels eating just one bite is annoying for you but perhaps better for the sustainability of the tree? (just thinking loud)
Probably no difference for the individual tree, but I can imagine that partly eaten fruit being knocked to the ground is part of the seed-dispersal system.
A while back I used to feed pigeons at our home roof top. One day I saw while the pigeons were eating the wheat a cat hunted a pigeon. I realised my wheat feed was acting like a bait for cats to hunt pigeons. Stopped feeding them thereafter because I didn't want to be responsible for helping the cat kill the pigeons.
Rat population is less too. But rats are good at hiding below the earth, but I do witness a cat hunting a rat every other week.
This also means that birds are responsible for more incidents here on the cybersecurity parody site CyberSquirrel, which tracks when wildlife brings down computer systems.
Up until around mid-19th century or so, they were rare in US cities too. If you saw a squirrel in the city it was probably someone's pet. According to a newspaper account from 1856 New York, hundreds of people gathered around a tree that an escaped pet squirrel was spotted in to watch it.
In the later half of the 19th century, there was a popular movement in park design and management in the US that said that making city parks more natural was essential to the health and wellbeing of city dwellers who did not have time to get out of the city. As part of that many cities purposefully released squirrels into their parks.
This is also why you find Eastern gray squirrels in many cities far outside the Eastern gray's native range (which is as you can guess from the name the eastern US). When people wanted to introduce squirrels into, say, Seattle parks they didn't do what you might expect and send someone out to the nearest forest to rustle up some Western gray squirrels to move to the city. No, they had Eastern grays shipped across country and released those in Seattle parks.
The reason for this is that in many areas the native trees are not the kind of trees people like in their parks and so city parks often were largely populated by imported trees from the eastern US. If those imported trees did not produce the kinds of nuts and seeds that the native squirrels like, then native squirrels weren't going to work out in the parks so they brought in squirrels from where the trees came from.
Unfortunately, Eastern grays aren't very picky eaters. They are quite happy eating the nuts and seeds from the native trees and so quickly spread from the parks to the wild and have largely replaced the native Western gray squirrels in Washington. I think the Western grays here are down to just one population.
(The other native squirrels here, Douglas, Red, and Northern flying) weren't affected much by the spread of Eastern grays because they fill sufficiently difference niches in the ecosystem. With Western grays on the other hand Eastern grays are essentially slightly smaller versions of them that like a much bigger variety of nuts and seeds).
Yes, very common in Canada. I live in Montreal and frequently have as many as four just hanging out in my backyard.
Funnily enough, gray squirrels were also introduced in London parks in the 19th century and have completely taken over the city, much like here in North America.
Instead what I get to do is fill a couple of 5-gallon buckets with green, unripened nuts that the fucking squirrels decided to remove from the tree 2 months before they're ready. Last year I found exactly 0 viable nuts. They were all stripped off the tree before their time.
I just convince myself that their happiness is my happiness. And the shade is still good.
The husband despised the squirrels for ruining both his garden as well as his bird feeders. Being handy, he put one bird feeder on a metal articulating arm out the kitchen window. And then he wired it to the outside light switch.
He got much joy out of flipping that switch and shocking the tree rats!
One would be a pleasure.
https://www.gardenweasel.com/garden-weasel-products/garden-w...
Some quick research shows that a big part of the problem is diet: squirrels require a surprisingly complex and varied diet that is hard for pet owners to replicate. Getting them enough physical activity is also an issue.
(Of course, one might suspect that it would be cruel to keep squirrels in such unnatural conditions, but the same could be said of most pets.)
[edit: Apparently keeping wild, undomesticated squirrels as pets was popular at one point (https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pet-squirrel-craze ). That article doesn't say why the trend died out, other than...all of the obvious reasons.]
[edit 2: Would a squirrel raised indoors always think it was summer, or would they start storing and then digging up food as the year progressed even with no change in temperature? Might be relevant.]
Still, hypothetically, it should be possible to domesticate squirrels within a few decades. In foxes, domestication only took 7 generations, so it could even be faster.
Incidentally, I have a new startup idea: first you domesticate squirrels, then you produce a line of commercially packaged squirrel food and an "invisible fence" type system for "outdoor" squirrels.
She runs the same general circuit most of the time, going up the left wall, crossing the rafters to the right, stashing the nuts somewhere up there (I haven't yet gotten around to getting a ladder and trying to find out just where she puts them), and then exiting somewhere on the right (she has a couple of different ways she comes down).
Here she is running her garage circuit:
https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/AIc43WuOR6qbKiadxWGOKw....
As far as I've seen none of the eastern gray squirrels that are more common here use my garage. I've only ever seen them burying peanuts in my yard, or taking them somewhere off my property.
It was also interesting to see the extent humans would go through to stash the food they had hunted or caught -- for instance, elevated platforms in the trees -- and the determination of animals such as bears, wolverines, and foxes to raid the stashes.
I think I read a couple months ago bout an old lady who got dragged out of her tent by a bear and killed because of improperly secured food[1]
Is amazing how many nuts the squirrel has harvested.
Oaks produce huge numbers of acorns about one season every 7 years. My yard had thousands and thousands a few years ago, for example, but very few since. Oaks seem to do this to overwhelm squirrels and ensure that a few acorns manage to germinate. Squirrels that can save acorns for years will do much better than squirrels that can only save enough for each winter.
Just trying to imagine the angry spousal argument over the nuts in squirrel
Would the Squirrel likely starve (or if it was a breadwinner would the whole family starve), or would another squirrel help it out?
If anyone has interesting resources to learn about squirrels that could help me investigate more please share.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/crypto-trading-hamster-mr-...
Greys forget, reds probably don't but they are so angry fighting each other most of the time over control of territory including the caches.
>would another squirrel help it out?
They'd eat each other before starving. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/red-squir...
Luckily, one day after a fresh snowfall, we noticed a trail of rat footprints, and then at the end of the trail, a dead, bloody rat. From the tracks we saw, it seems a feathered predator saw the rat and took care of problem.
After some research I discovered the toilet paper roll to to trash method. You setup stairs using boxes to a toilet paper roll with peanut butter on the end. The mouse goes to the end to get the peanut butter, the roll tips over before the mouse can back out and falls into the trash can
What they don't say and was surprised by was that mice can jump nearly two feet into the air and was scared when one escaped.
To solve the problem you fill the trash with enough water so the mouse can't jump not climb over the lip of the trash can.
Most of the mice were trapped when I was at class but once when I was doing homework I found out mice can swim for about thirty minutes at full speed before they give up.
Suddenly the viral pictures of communication dishes packed to the brim with nuts becomes so much more believable.
After that we started putting soup cans over the exhaust pipes if they were going to sit more than a day or two.
https://www.autobodynews.com/index.php/industry-news/item/20...
(Random dealer site which lists it for sale: https://www.collegehillshonda.com/product/4019-2317.html)
Since most of HN doesn't know, there's a big difference between grey/fox squirrels that most people see running around outside and these red devils. I would argue most haven't even seen these, they are smaller, more skittish, and typically only live around areas that have a lot of pine trees.
For one, red squirrels aren't quiet, they bark and chitter all the time for warning calls or territorial challenging. They aren't social so much as combative. Extremely territorial and destructive to housing. These are the ones that will eat through wood siding then destroy attic insulation on their quest to overwinter indoors and store tree nuts inside the walls. When it's not pecan nuts rolling by in walls, they are beating the shit out one another or barking and chittering as you or your pets are nearby. Sound, smells, ultrasonic, predator calls, all ineffective to get them to leave a space once they settle in. If they have young, you can't remove (either by relocation, plugging up the hole they made, or killing) until the young is out or they'll die and stink up the house. Even if you do plug a hole, they'll spend days trying to get back in barking and scratching the whole time.
I can't think of a wild animal I hate more. Exterminators don't have a high success rate against them, traps are rarely effective (and they learn fast if they escape), and the amount of damage they cause is obscene.
Once, she had purchased candy corn along with other groceries, to take to class, but absentmindedly forgot to bring the plastic bag with the sealed bag of it inside.
When she went out to the car the next day, there was no such bag to be found, leaving her rather confused as to how she could have left it somewhere.
A few days later, when driving, she heard _something_ rolling around in the outside of the car, and after a few rounds of looking and seeing nothing visible, a few kernels of candy corn rolled along the floor where she could see.
She took the car in, they went looking around, and went "...we can definitely tell there was _something_ living in there, but whatever it is, it's gone now. We've removed the candy corn we found." (It was not a whole bag, just a few dozen kernels. No sign of the bag that bag was in either.)
Was something living in the car unnoticed before and smelled the bag, and extracted it to its home under the hood? (I've certainly observed areas with nothing but "sealed" bags of candy corn carrying the distinctive smell before.) Did something smell it from outside and find a way in?
We will never know, but it was quite an odd experience to just find candy corn rolling along the floor from nowhere.
Bonus recollection:
Somehow, my family member's car was cursed in some way, and on multiple occasions, with the car located at different homes each time, a nest of bees was discovered in the frame.
The first time, the car was parked near a house, and there were plenty of plants and naturally bees around, so that was unsurprising.
The second time, it was living at an apartment complex without much foliage around at all, or any bees noticed anywhere.
If it had been the same place, one might wonder if the first bees had returned, but it looks like that distance is usually very limited, and he had moved a good number of miles away.
A "not mine" recollection: A certain car vendor had to have multiple recalls because it was found that spiders were invading the car, because the concentrations of gasoline vapor were high enough to attract certain spiders but not high enough to kill them, and they would sometimes weave webs that blocked key locations. (It was Mazda, if you want to look up more details.)
Then I get this headscratcher:
> This page transmits information using https protocol. Some vendors cannot receive opt-out requests via https protocols so the processing of your opt-out request is incomplete. To complete the opt-out process, please click here to resubmit your preferences.
???
If there was ever an appropriate time to say it, it's now: Deez Nuts!