Friday, June 5, 2009

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE SQUIRREL KIND!

The Cat

The Squirrel

The First Encounter






Found the golden nugget

Burying the treasure

The Second Encounter




Close Encounter of the Third Kind


I was witness to this little ongoing drama in my front yard this morning. Dante was on leash, but with a 40-ft. lead which provides sufficient space for stalking. We have a resident squirrel who lives in the spruce tree which borders our purroperty and our neighbour's. This is not an evil squirrel like ones we have encountered before. This is a mama squirrel who is only trying to forage for food to feed her babies.

Ms. Squirrel is a cheeky little thing, though, and quite daring at that. She doesn't seem purrticularly threatened by the feline purresence. She is more interested in getting her message across to me, that I need to fetch nuts -- and now!

She will come quite close and look me directly in the eye, and wait (not so patiently) until I return with what she treasures most.

So, I scattered a handful of peanuts (in the shell) after which she busily hopped around gathering them one by one -- keeping one eye on Dante, but determined to collect them all. You can see how close she comes to Dante a number of times. On this occasion Dante did rise to the bait (so to speak) and gave chase, but luckily Ms. Squirrel is lighter and faster and easily escaped -- only to find a spot at the edge of the drive where she buried her newly acquired booty. (Actually, there's a nice booty shot of her burying it, there.)

So, it was a regular game of cat and squirrel -- stalk and retreat, stalk and retreat, snatch and grab (the treat, that is).

Finally, Ms. Squirrel had enough for the day and she retired to her tree house for a little R&R and some quality time with her little ones.

Dante was left to ponder the one that got away (again)!

13 comments:

Quill and Greyson said...

Go Ms Squirrel!

Reese =^..^= said...

Dat is really cool. How nice dat it was all caught wiff da camera.

Milo and Alfie said...

Lovely story and pics. We enjoyed it.

Anonymous said...

Oh, we will just spend all day here, looking at these. All day.

The Taylor CatSSSSS said...

What fantastic pictures! The drama!!! That squirrel was very brave!

Memories of Eric and Flynn said...

What a brave squirrel she is. We liked the photos of her teasing Dante. They made us drool.

♣icefox♣ said...

Funny! We don't have those velvety black squirells where I live.

The Island Cats said...

Wow! That squirrel is brave! We cannot believe how close she gets to Dante! We're not sure we would have been so patient like Dante...we woulda chased her for sure!

(pee ess. we call squirrels like that "Ernie squirrels" because they are black like Ernie!)

Shaggy and Scout said...

What an amazing series of pictures!
We've never seen a black squirrel! We have only (mostly) gray squirrels and some smaller red ones and also an albino in the neighborhood. They are all very saucy & quite rude!
Dante, you were doing an excellent stalking job!

8GR8LOLCATS said...

écureuil noir!!!

I love that black squirrel... they are so different FURom the squirrely FURiends we R FURmiliar with in these parts... WNY!

susan said...

What a tease, that squirrel is!
Susan

Jasmim said...

Very cute the pictures!

Jas & Gi

Angel MoMo and Charlotte said...

Cute one! We don't have squirrels here. SS misses them - they used to come right into her living room when she was living in the UK. Dante is beautiful.