There Are Three Squirrels

Our feral rodent colony keeps growing – the past three days I’ve seen a third squirrel out in the back yard cavorting with Two-Tone and #2.

No pictures yet – they’re skittish and as soon as I unlatch the plantation shutters to get a clear view with a camera, they’re gone! Which confirms that they’re the ones living under the pergola, with entrances dug on both ends.

It gets cool at night, down into the low 40’s and upper 30’s, so where we see them first in the morning is on top of the cinder block wall, soaking up the early morning sun as much as possible. Given the hawks I’ve seen around here, that sounds like a dangerous, indefensible position, but who am I to give life advice to a squirrel?

The third one doesn’t seem notably smaller than the first two, so I don’t get the sense that it’s a baby or newborn. But again, what do I know? It could be that #2 is a mate to Two-Tone and they’ve been cohabitating and giving birth for months under the pergola floor, and only now that it’s older and larger is the new squirrel coming out into the open.

All three of them seem to have the white neck ring that I first saw when I named “Two-Tone.” That could mean that they’re all related, or it could mean that they’re all the same subspecies of critter. My money’s on the second one.

I wonder if I can rig a remote trigger on one of my Canon DSLRs or an old iphone and put it outside of their tunnel or on top of the wall to get closeup pictures without freaking them out…