Our neighbor stealing some fruit....

[Dr Mordrid]

More precisely, crabapples off one of the trees in the front yard.

Our kids/grandkids love watching them but one of our dogs, Zero - a Jack Russel Terrier, is going to go brain dead if she keeps falling off the back of the couch hitting her head on the marble sill

[Evildead666]

Is that red AND grey ?

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup. That's a fox squirrel, the largest species (500g to a kilogram or more) of tree squirrel in North America and aka as raccoon, monkey-faced or stump-eared. We also have red, grey and a huge population of blacks, which is a melanistic grey.

We also have ground squirrels ranging from the gerbil sized chipmunk (as in Alvin) to the prarie dogs, woodchuck, rockchuck and a few other local variants. Woodchucks are the largest locally maxing out (in my experience) at about 9 kilograms for those well fed examples that hang around farms. Neighborhood 'chucks run more like half that size.

Woodchucks are such a nuisance on farms that farmers will hire older kids from the area to cull them after the harvest using .22, 22 magnum, .222 or other 'varmit' rifles. Otherwise the next year an even larger family will clean out the fields in short order. Has to be done with a cleared field because they're so wary - ducking if they see anything near the tree line. Our 'normal' shot was from 100 to 300 meters using an 8x scope and we'd get $3 a head and the carcass (for eating).

Woodchucks and the larger squirrels are great eating, and in the days before cattle drives were the largest source of mammal meat in North America. Still make up a huge portion of mammal meat taken during hunting season by weight.

Great fried, stewed or whatever.

Fox squirrel

[Mehen]

Those black squirrels are creepy looking. I am used to seeing greys here; saw nothing but blacks when I was in Eastern Ontario earlier this month.

[Dr Mordrid]

Sorry for that, couldn't resist. That critter is a melanistic Abert's squirrel which is native to the Rockie Mountain region and is sometimes mistaken for a black. This is a real black....



BTW: it's thought that before Euopeans came black squirrels were the dominant form in cold climates because of their increased ability to absorb solar heat. Increased tree cutting caused greys to have a camoflage advantage (brighter woods, felled trees etc.) so their numbers increase. Blacks were then spread again intentionally, often in an attempt to displace reds and fox, notably by Dr. Kellogg (yes, that Kellogg).