The squirrel is mine....the dog-gone squirrel is mine**

Squirrels terrorize our urban garden/jungle of a backyard every summer. They sit in the trees and chomp on nuts, leave half eaten tomatoes on the edges of planter boxes and scare the crap out of me by rustling in the bushes. Finally, someone is going to figure them out. A biologist at the University of Chicago is going to track city squirrels and figure out these crafty little buggers. They are really cool actually- they (the squirrels not the scientists) PRETEND to hide food and fake out the other squirrels by taking the nut with them and burying nothing. They prefer different types of food based on how much they need nutrition *right now*. They also forget where they hide things and 80% of them die under cars.

Urban ecology is far more important as urban spawn seems to grow exponentially so it is nice to see the national media picking up on it!


** Yes, the Michael Jackson/Paul McCartney song "The Girl is Mine" really did come up on my shuffling iTunes while writing this post.