Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People are weird.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

When we show up, we win.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

T R E 4 5 O N

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

Let there be snark.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

In after Baud. Damn.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Squirrel! (Open Thread)

Squirrel! (Open Thread)

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This squirrel was hanging out on a post near one of the bird feeders. It kept staring at me for some reason, even though I was minding my own business inside the house and am famously tolerant of squirrels raiding my feeders:

I figured if I pulled out my camera, it would go away, and sure enough, it did, just after I took the above photo. Bye, Squirrely McSquirrelpants. Open thread!

Reader Interactions

108Comments

  1. 1.

    TenguPhule

    It kept staring at me for some reason, even though I was minding my own business inside the house and am famously tolerant of squirrels raiding my feeders:

    It knows you have food in the house.

    It can think!

  2. 2.

    Keith P.

    I’ve got 4-5 of them regularly in my yard. They discovered that I leave piles of black sunflower out, and the squirrels bully everyone (themselves included) over it. One of was funny – it would go hop to the food, grab a seed, then hop to the shade to eat it. Then it would hop back, grab a seed, hop the other way *over* a broken pot, and then lay spread-eagle on its stomach to eat the seed with its head over the edge of the deck. It repeated this several times.

  4. 4.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Is there a “It’snotjusttrump” hashtag?

    Jon Adams‏ @ JonAdams3
    What better way to welcome @ SenDonnelly to the campaign than with a Mariachi band? #INSen #MexicoJoe

    I’m assuming this is about immigration? from the head of the NRSC, so I’m not sure if this genius was hired by McConnell or (more likely) Ronna Romney McDaniel, who also hired the birther dingbat from CNN whose name is escaping me

    Was gonna include the tweet from the VA GOP about Northram betraying his heritage by supporting the removal of statues of traitors, but they’ve deleted the tweet and are backtracking in confusion that people are interpreting that as racist.

  5. 5.

    donnah

    My dad used to feed them peanuts on the patio. They looked like fat little piglets in fur coats. They got so tame and brassy that Mom found one sitting cheerfully in their storage closet by the back door, having gnawed its way through the sliding screen door. He found Dad’s stash and was helping himself.

    Dad had to replace the door, and he severely curtailed the peanut jamboree.

  6. 6.

    JCJ

    Maybe it is watching you so intently because it is a Trump supporter and it knows what you write on the internet. If it is a Trump supporter it is assuredly one of the more intelligent ones.

  7. 7.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @TenguPhule: It knows you have food in the house.
    It can think!

    I read an article a year or so ago about how adaptive raccoons are, and how quickly they can learn things like how to get through pet doors… I do not welcome our future raccoon overlords. Of all categories of better-looking-rat, raccoons are, to me, the scariest. I assume squirrels would get that mean if they got that big

  8. 8.

    Yarrow

    I am not a fan of squirrels. They are kind of fun to watch but such pests in other ways. We’ve been inundated with baby squirrels this year and they ate all sorts of things in my garden I’ve never seen them eat. Pests.

  10. 10.

    Brachiator

    Why do so many squirrels hang around outside the Oval Office windows?

    Because Trump’s nuts.

  12. 12.

    chris

    I live in the woods surrounded by red squirrels and I feed the birds. But due to the activities of the Committee for the Suppression of Rodents no squirrel dares to come within the 50 yard no-go zone. They sit just outside the line and yell at us. The committee has never caught a squirrel but they never stop trying.

  15. 15.

    MomSense

    Today was a big day for my pup. She was home alone all day (except for a quick walk at lunchtime) and I didn’t crate her. I walked all around the house and ishe didn’t destroy anything.

    We are going to go for a long walk in the woods and spend extra time at the wild blueberry patch as a reward.

  16. 16.

    TriassicSands

    From Trump’s fairy tale speech in Arizona:

    And thank you too Alveda King, the niece of the great Dr. Martin Luther King.

    WTF is a niece of MLK doing at a Trump rally? I was unaware of Ms. King until I read that and, not surprisingly, it bothered me. She’s also a Fox News contributor and voted for Trump. It sounds like she’s a pro-life (and more) conservative. Depressing.

  17. 17.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Roger Moore: I’m afraid I’m gonna have to disagree with your science there, Roger. Bears are wise and lovable guardians of the forest. Raccoons are sharp-toothed, flea-ridden, hissing, dumpster-diving, disease-carrying alley thugs.

    They’re coming for all of us.

  21. 21.

    dr. bloor

    @JCJ:

    Maybe it is watching you so intently because it is a Trump supporter and it knows what you write on the internet. If it is a Trump supporter it is assuredly one of the more intelligent ones.

    Doubtful. No guns, camo, or derp to be seen.

  24. 24.

    Kay

    I have a young rabbit living in my back garden. I think he was orphaned because he’s been alone out there since he was very small. I haven’t touched him or anything and he’s growing so he must be getting along okay but he’s not afraid of people anymore- the back garden is fenced and no one bothers him but it’s probably not good that he’s acting like a pet rabbit.

  25. 25.

    jl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sen Donelly seemed to think it was fun.I wonder how many passers-by got the stupid bigot joke, until the GOP helpfully explained it to them? Saw one pic of a woman dancing, and some others smiling like “OK! Nice music! Is there a festival?’

    The GOP and its hard core supporters are so deep into their cult codes, and symbolism, I wonder how many ordinary people get the dog whistles anymore. Or will care, after the GOP PR flacks explain their ideological interpretation of it to them.

  27. 27.

    Jeffro

    My workplace’s squirrels have their own Twitter account. It’s not as funny as it should be.

  28. 28.

    Villago Delenda Est

    This morning, there was a squirrel hanging out in the back yard (this is a common thing). My cat walked by, and the squirrel jumped up on a fence just to be sure. The cat glanced at it and decided coming back in the house was more important than harassing a squirrel.

  29. 29.

    TriassicSands

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    You’re too mean. Raccoons are admirable creatures — of course that makes them potentially troublesome, because they are clever little problem solvers with incredible fore-paw dexterity. I remember being constantly plagued by them at night in the Camp 4 GG in Yosemite (years ago). The only way to deal with them was to make sure you had a pristine campsite. Anything left out would be fully examined for caloric potential. Naturally, there were always people who either didn’t get the message or were just too lazy to clean up after themselves. As a result, every night there would be the sound of marauding raccoons as they worked their way from campsite to campsite looking for jars they could open or other snacks. Even if all you left out were fully washed pots and pans, the raccoons would rifle through them making all kinds of sleep-disturbing noise. I had a certain grudging respect for their cleverness and tenacity, but it is never good to let any wild animal become habituated to people.

  30. 30.

    p.a.

    I thought based on the title this was a thread about tRump’s attention span…

    What would be the legal implications if, during a tRump rally, an IMPARTIAL observer were to call 911 to report an elderly man having a seizure?

  32. 32.

    chris

    @WaterGirl:

    Somebody didn’t bring enough snacks to the committee meeting.

    That was just before breakfast and I had the phone in my hand. Last winter I think and I’ve never seen them do it again.

  33. 33.

    Mnemosyne

    @Roger Moore:

    There are signs up at our main workplace telling people not to feed the squirrels, but they are tame enough that they’ll eat out of your hand. It’s kind of required here, IMO.

  35. 35.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    A year or two ago, my dog had the greatest dog moment of dog moments.

    I was walking him around the block. The lane is about a car and a half wide in places, so the gap is narrow and brushy woods go right to the road’s edge. I’d gotten to the narrowest part. and it was warm, so shithead’s jaws were open while his tongue dangled and dripped.

    For whatever reason (probably on a drunken dare from one of the squirrel’s best friends), a squirrel leaped across that gap, actually passing between the dog’s jaws. Undoubtedly, fur brushed across shithead’s tongue. He seemed as surprised as I was, and was a bit perplexed by it.

    I always reckon that he tells all the other dogs about “the one that got away, I had him right in my jaws…”

  36. 36.

    Cacti

    News that should surprise none:

    During the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign, Wikileaks declined to publish 68 gigs worth of data on Russia’s military and intelligence involvement in Ukraine.

    Assange turned the leaker down cold.

  37. 37.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @jl: I wouldn’t think the party who ginned up the big phony Carrier “deal” would want to bring up a discussion about manufacturing jobs being outsourced to Mexico

    Carrier plant moving hundreds of jobs to Mexico after Trump ‘deal’
    BY ADAM EDELMAN
    NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
    Updated: Tuesday, May 23, 2017, 2:56 PM
    A deal that then President-elect Trump claimed would save more than 1,000 jobs at an Indiana Carrier plant will actually send more than 600 jobs to Mexico, the company announced Monday.
    In the weeks following last November’s election, Trump and then Vice President-elect Mike Pence highly publicized their efforts to put pressure on the air conditioner manufacturer to keep it from outsourcing jobs to Mexico — a key campaign promise.
    The pressure resulted in an incentive-laden deal that saved about 800 jobs. But the deal still called for at least 500 jobs to be moved to Mexico.
    And on Monday, Carrier said it would be outsourcing even more than that.
    The company will eliminate a total of 632 jobs at the company’s Indianapolis factory — work that will be outsourced to Mexico — with 338 jobs being cut by July 20 and another 290 being cut by Dec. 22, the company said.

    Pretty sure Carrier still gets their $7 million in state tax breaks.

  40. 40.

    SFBayAreaGal

    In my backyard I’ve seen racoons, squirrels, a skunk, humming birds, geese, red shoulder hawk, cats and dogs.

  42. 42.

    efgoldman

    @TriassicSands:

    I remember being constantly plagued by them at night in the Camp 4 GG in Yosemite (years ago). The only way to deal with them was to make sure you had a pristine campsite.

    I’ve told this story before: early 1990s, mrs efg had her Girls Scout troop (10-11 y o) out camping, sitting around the campfire making/eating s’mores. A raccoon meandered into the circle of girls, right next to the fire (!), grabbed the bag of marshmallows, and meandered away.
    You could almost hear the screams at our house, a few miles away.

  43. 43.

    jl

    @p.a.: ” I thought based on the title this was a thread about tRump’s attention span…”

    Which gives me an excuse the bring up (again) my solution to Trump’s suggestion last night that he might shut down the fed govt in order to force Congress to fund his Mexico wall.

    Which is to just pass bills that say they do stuff with no implementation or funding mechanisms. So, Congress passes a bill entitled ‘Congressional Act to Fund the Trump Mexico Wall”. It has a page or two of long winded boilerplate saying that it a Congressional act to fund the Trump Mexico wall. And that would be it. Doesn’t actually do anything. Needs to be just long enough so that Trump will quit reading before he gets to the end.

    Trump will have the best signing ceremonies ever!

    They could make up a template, and just plug in the blanks for different stuff Trump wants passed.

    Problem solved. You are welcome.

  44. 44.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Raccoons were a scourge when we had an indoor/outdoor cat and kept his food on the porch. The cat knew raccoons and was wary – hed lounge in a chair and flip his tail as the raccoons ate from his bowl – he knew better than to tangle (he was a big fat bastard, too – that cat ate at three houses). One night when she still smoked, the Countess was on the back porch reading while I was occupied with laundry or something. I hear a shriek and come running. She’s standing on a porch chair while the biggest, fattest raccoon I’ve ever seen is up on the porch between her and both exits. I first try shouting at it, then crack the sliding door and bang a broom at it. No movement. I say “I think I’m going to have to shoot it” and she shrieks again over the potential mess, as I have nothing in a small caliber. In her mind (which wasn’t incorrect), raccoon would be splattered everywhere, and maybe on her. Lucky for the raccoon, by the time I came back with the smallest caliber thing I could find, it had scrambled off.

  47. 47.

    Keith P.

    @Roger Moore: Giant rats = opossums. I get them regularly (backyard, *in* the house). they’re very sweet, timid creatures, but dumb as dirt. I had a juvenile in the house a couple weeks ago, and it was adorable….way more terrified of me than the adults, and slightly larger than a rat. I saw it months earlier with 3 of its littermates hitching a ride on mama’s back.
    They’re actually pretty ugly all things being said…I wouldn’t want one as a pet. Now, a raccoon…tame one of those, and you’ve got a very dexterous cat on your hands, but cuuuute.

  52. 52.

    chris

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): No, not the taste. We don’t have possums here but we do have lots of porcupines. They’re easy to kill with a stick and the oldtimers talk about eating them during hard times. Too wormy for me and I’ve never been that hungry.

  53. 53.

    efgoldman

    @SFBayAreaGal: –

    In my backyard I’ve seen racoons, squirrels, a skunk, humming birds, geese, red shoulder hawk, cats and dogs.

    We’ve had all of those except hummingbirds (we don’t have a hummer feeder) and geese. When we moved in, and the yard hadn’t been mowed in maybe two years, we had some kind of ground bird (quail?); we have the occasional rabbit, a groundhog family, and this year a litter of fox kits. Oh, and the chipmunks – always the chipmunks.

  59. 59.

    Yarrow

    @debbie: They stripped the apple tree in 30 minutes. Pests. Ate tomatoes this year too, for the first time. Green ones that never had a chance to ripen. We had plenty of rain and I always fill a few bird baths, so it’s not that they needed water. Like I said, we had way more baby squirrels than I remember seeing most years so I think it was just sheer numbers.

  60. 60.

    J R in WV

    WE had a friend, long ago, who found a very recently deceased mother o’possum, with several little o’possums clinging to her.

    She was a warm-hearted person, who rescued the babies, got some kind of baby pet formula, and had fed those little varmits for – well I dunno how long. I will never forget when she came over for a party, potluck, with two baby possums in her very long hair. All you could really see were the eyes.

    I’m a huge animal lover. But I draw a line, and the possums are on the other side of that line.

    We visited some 2nd cousins some time back, late 1990s, up in Ohio, around the Dover area. They had black squirrels all over the place! They said the strain was spreading fast out of Kent. Maybe some biologist at the U? Cute, they were!

  61. 61.

    JMG

    @efgoldman: Chipmunks! They can and have burrowed under the cement slab of the garage leaving rubble on the driveway. Otherwise, our back yard is a wildlife viewing spectacle due to a power cut near the house which is like an interstate from the North Woods for critters. We’ve seen a hawk grab a rabbit in the yard, we’ve seen coyotes, wild turkeys, and many deer, including a battle between two bucks in mating season in the late fall. It is amazing how quickly animals have learned that suburban housing means man can’t kill them there.

  64. 64.

    Keith P.

    @trollhattan: I believe it. They’re pretty timid, and if you can get past their ugly fucking faces and thick, long tail (longer than their body) they could be decent pets. I’d still much rather raise a raccoon from a baby as a pet than a possum.

  67. 67.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Our old lab actually “caught” a squirrel one winter. It was fresh deep snow and she moved faster than the squirrel, so after one leap she shocked both of them by landing on top of it.

    She’d obviously never contemplated what to do if you actually got one, and let it struggle free and make its terrified way to the nearby tree.

    Towards the end, I was the one pointing out the squirrels to her as she was no longer spotting them.

  71. 71.

    Mnemosyne

    @dmsilev:

    Not with the Seven Dwarfs watching us.

    Occasionally a red-tailed hawk will perch on the dwarfs’ heads. That’s when the squirrels start doing somersaults across the lawn. ?

  73. 73.

    Geeno

    @J R in WV: And very friendly. They were common in Ohio, but had gone locally extinct years ago. They were reintroduced at the university. When I went to Kent(very early eighties), they would beg snacks off the students, doing their best puppy eyes impersonation. They were very cute. Larger than grays, too.

  78. 78.

    dmsilev

    @Mnemosyne: Fair point. Here, people mostly feed the collection of turtles that live in a campus pond. And yes, the ‘do not feed the animals’ sign is more honored in the breach.

  79. 79.

    Quinerly

    OT…never bought or listened to an audio book. Was going to pre order our girl’s book and was considering the audio version for upcoming NC trip. Can’t tell if Hillary reads it or not. Shouldn’t it indicate “author narrated” or something like that? I’ll just buy the book and read it if she’s not narrating it. Want to hear that grating voice all the fucking Bernie supporters bitched about.? Seriously, don’t the authors always narrate their books?

  80. 80.

    randy khan

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Oh, but Northam’s response to the VA GOP went up before they deleted it:

    I feel fine about turning my back on white supremacy. How does @EdWGillespie feel about the president’s position?

    Not bad, Dr. Northam.

  81. 81.

    Yarrow

    So, Tropical Depression Harvey, soon to be a Tropical Storm, is heading for Texas. Going to be a massive flooding event. Twenty inches of rain in 24 hours kind of thing, over three days

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster for 30 counties in Texas in anticipation of the landfall of Tropical Depression Harvey.

    Some of the models have it making landfall and then curving around and heading back out to make another landfall in SE TX/SW LA.

  83. 83.

    A Ghost to Most

    The squirrels around here sometimes carry a flea that carries the plague. My neighbor lady hates them with a passion, and keeps a loaded pellet gun ready. She is quite happy with our cats policing her yard. I’ve yet to see a cat catch a squirrel, though.

  84. 84.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Quinerly: No authors often don’t. But I’m used to seeing a credit for the reader.

    If you’re talking about “What Happened” I’m looking at the listing at Audible and you’re right, no narrator listed. So maybe it hasn’t been recorded yet? But if that’s so, how can the have a length (16:30)? Dunno.

    I do note a previous book has shared Narration credits, Hillary Clinton and Kathleen Chalfont. So it’s likely she’ll read or co-read her own book I guess.

  85. 85.

    debbie

    @Quinerly:

    No, authors don’t always read their own books for the audio version. The excerpt I heard today, about Trump the Debate Creep, was read by Hillary, but I don’t know about the entire book. I’m sure Google will help you figure that out.

  86. 86.

    Humdog

    Betty, give your Daisy dog a big hug from me. I had to euthanize my boxer who could have been her doppelgänger on Monday and I wish I could give her more hugs.
    Fuck fucking cancer!
    I wonder just how much more I can take this year…..

  89. 89.

    TenguPhule

    @Yarrow:

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster for 30 counties in Texas in anticipation of the landfall of Tropical Depression Harvey.

    I hope he’s not expecting any Federal Aid. Because Georgia got shit all and theirs was from LAST YEAR.

  91. 91.

    Quinerly

    @debbie:
    The Google let me down. I’m hopeful, though. She narrated her last books…at least that’s what the all knowing Google seemed to say. Thanks.

  92. 92.

    Kathleen

    @donnah: When both of my parents were alive in living in a small apartment they would put food out for the birds, only to observe that 2 squirrels raided the feeder so the birds never got fed.

    My dad named the squirrels “Linder and Keating” in honor of 2 locals who figured prominently in the 1980’s Savings and Loan scandal.

  96. 96.

    TenguPhule

    @chris:

    Didn’t know you could eat them and didn’t want to know either.

    Bizzare Foods America. Travel Channel.

  98. 98.

    Mel

    @J R in WV:
    When I was a kid, we had a pet skunk. She had been brought as a tiny baby to a wildlife rescue which tried to re-acclimate her to the wild when she reached adolescence. She was too bonded to humans, and wanted no part of being permanently released, although she loved being outdoors.

    My Dad was a softhearted guy, and so he spent two weeks building a swanky elevated skunk house, attached to the back of our horse barn. It had a cat door-like apparatus on each end and a ramp on the outdoors side, so that she could come and go as she pleased.

    She was so smart. Quickly figured out that if she went into the barn at feeding time, we’d give her a sweet feed snack. She learned very quickly to walk on a leash, and loved to ride in the car and then stroll around with me in the little town where my grandparents lived.

    Since she loved to explore the woods on our farm, we talked to our vet and decided that de-scenting her was not an acceptable option, since she needed to have her natural defense in place.

    She never sprayed any of our dogs, never sprayed anywhere in the barn or outbuildings, and never sprayed a person. I loved that skunk like crazy. She loved belly rubs, loved to be brushed, and would hang out with me in a hammock for hours while I read. She also loved to get canned cat food as a special treat. The only spraying incident that ever occurred anywhere in the vicinity of the house or barns happened when a neighbor’s outdoor cat, drawn by the smell of the canned food treat, climbed up into the skunk house. Kitty shot out about 5 seconds later, trailing a noxious fog in her wake. Indignant skunk followed a few seconds later, snorting a little and looking mightily peeved.

    It took five days of cleanings to get that stink down to tolerable levels in skunk mansion.

  102. 102.

    Smitty

    In Battery Park there was a guy who buy a bag of walnuts in the morning, sit on a bench near the line for the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. Squirrels would come in droves when he knocked two walnuts together. They would climb all over him, sit on his head and shoulders. He made a living from the tourists taking photos. He got cash, squirrels got a meal, tourists got a pic. Win, win, win. He was there for years, may still be. I know the squirrels are.

  107. 107.

    TKinNC

    @Betty Cracker: Ms Cracker, Ms Cracker!! I has a question!
    My niece is attending UF. She is taking a class called (according to her) What is the Good Life. She says that everyone has to take it. Way back in my day (in HS) we had to take ‘Americanism vs Communism’ so I know that FL can make some cray-cray requirements — but what is ‘What is the Good Life’ about? Please ask your daughter.
    Thanks for any info!

  108. 108.

    Mel

    @TKinNC: Hope I’m not jumping in where not needed, but in case Betty has signed off for the evening, I might be able to help a little bit. From what I understand, it’s a core Humanities course, and it aims to expose students to a wide array of cultural values via works of literature and writings of historical / social significance. There are some foundation texts that all the instructors in all sections of the course are required to use (“Letters From a Birmingham Jail” and “Antigone” are two of those) but then individual instructors are given some leeway to pick supplemental materials that they find to be particularly significant or meaningful.

    That’s about the extent of my knowledge of the course, from acquaintances who have worked at UF.
    Hope that helps a little.

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