There is an oak tree’s amount of space in my heart for squirrels. I believe it’s because I was born in Los Angeles among the most urban of places where all the concrete, traffic, and some of the most angry and violent young people you could imagine just wasn’t a good habitat for them.

   My mother grew up in a suburb part of LA, which is now as urban as the rest of the cities in the county. I don’t  really know if she saw a lot of squirrels then, but judging from pictures I’ve seen of her as a child at her home, I’m sure she did. My father, on the other hand, grew up on a farm in Arkansas where there were plenty of critters for a lad to live among. I won’t go into how he ended up in LA, but he did and he my mom got married and started a family. Being how you can’t take the country out of the man, he would take the family camping at least once a year up in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. It was there that my fascination with squirrels began. With all of the acorns in the trees and on the ground, there was plenty of food for those bushy tailed cuties to thrive all year round. However, they couldn’t resist the tasty cracker being offered from a little boy’s fingers. I looked forward to those trips for several reasons, and those little animals were high on that list.

   I was 12 years old by the time my parent’s dream to get out of the city and live in the country was realized. It was more than we imagined. We know lived on a nice piece of property with a huge lake in our back yard. It was a permanent camping trip, squirrels and all.

   One afternoon while we were at the picnic table eating, Tinkerbelle, our fearless hunter cat, brought over something in her mouth and laid it at my mom’s side of the bench. It was a baby squirrel.  She just left it there and went back to her business. A few minutes later she brought us back another one, carrying it as a cat would their own kitten. Again, she laid it by the bench. By now my mom is in the house looking for items and suitable foods to feed them. My dad was looking for the nest where they were found in the first place. Meanwhile, our male version of our “fearless hunter” duo came back with another little baby squirrel. Obviously no maternal instinct there for when he arrived with it, well, let’s just say he wasn’t gentle while en’ route. My mom went to town to get some supplies needed to nurse the two new babies in our home.

   The wee ones were growing, and they were strong and rambunctious. They were dubbed “Lenny an Squiggy”, named after the two nutty (pun well intended) characters on the tv show, “Laverne and Shirley”. It wasn’t our intention to keep them as pets, so we had them outside as much as possible, showing them their natural habitat, letting them climb tree’s starting with five footers and graduating them to the bigger ones. My dad had a wooden shack not too far up a large tree already in place for them to live if they so chose. All this preparation was for 1. They are wild animals, and 2. Holding true to the phrase, “If you love something, set it free……”. You know the one!

   Good times! In no time they were high up in the trees doing what squirrels do. Lenny was way up there when he went out on a limb a little too far and fell to the ground to what should’ve been his death. But he looked like a super ball as he hit the  soft earth and sprang up, grabbed the tree and scurried right back on up. Applause please!   Another time that little Lenny should’ve been hurt was when he was roaming through our lawn and my dog pounced on him with her front paws just as she would do to a tennis ball when she wanted to play. I’m not sure, but I think our cat “Tinky” might have given him a few of her lives as a birthday gift.

   Since then as an adult, I have moved around and have been blessed with squirrels everywhere I went. My fascination as a little boy, and the intimacy of the experience of raising squirrels had turned into love and respect for them. I’m not, by any stretch, a squirrel whisperer, however, I think they sense my gentle connection with them and have been able to this day, gain enough trust anywhere I’m calling home at the time, to have the honor of a squirrel to sit on my lap while enjoying a tasty cracker from a big boy’s fingers.