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.